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Public Anthropology – 10 Years from Researchpages to Closer (1999/2000 – 2009/2010)

Posted on November 9th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Blogosphere, Headline, ISIM/RU Research.

Introduction: a fantastic, time-consuming, idea
In 1999, when I just had started my Ph.D project in Gouda, I had a fantastic idea. An idea so fantastic that in the next 10 years I would dedicate a huge amount of time to sustaining and developing it. Too much time perhaps because sometimes it destroyed my time to sleep. The idea was that I would launch a website about and for my research and that also dealt with all kinds of issues related to it. Certainly not the first anthropology site (that is as far as I know CSAC Ethnographics Gallery) but I do think it was one of the first of an individual anthropologist and the first Dutch anthropologist website. It started out as a ‘normal’ website called Researchpages. It does not exist anymore and I lost a copy because of a recent computercrash. It took me until April 2001 to have a real website and although not updated anymore it is still working.

In the course of 2002 and 2003 I developed a weblog that initially was only one of the parts of the whole website. Since March 2004 the weblog is hosted at Religionresearch.org, an initiative set up with several colleagues from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (note to myself…this also means that Religionresearch.org has a five year anniversary): Peter, Marten and Johan. After 2006 the weblog became the most important part of the site and i decided not to update the other parts anymore but to include more and more in the weblog. Furthermore the site had changed from a linkdump to a mix between linkdump, research reports and personal accounts and early attempts to analyze particular developments, themes and issues.

C L O S E R
Why the name Closer? One of my colleagues at ISIM said at one point that the name suggest (physical) intimicacy. And she was spot on. Because when you ethnographic research (and in particular in the way of my PhD research) you become quite intimate with people and you have a look in their daily private lives, thoughts and acts. It also suggests a closer look at issues and developments we do not immediately understand.

In the beginning Closer was somewhat out of mainstream blogosphere and also out of the anthropology blogosphere. From 2008 onwards but (after a break for which I’m still not going to tell you the reasons behind it) in particular from March 2009 I have tried to link up with the growing anthropology blogging community. In particular Open Anthropology, Media Anthropology and Antropologi.info provide interesting and thought-provoking entries I often link to.

What do I want with Closer? Closer can be seen as my contribution (with all the strong and weak points that come with it) to a public anthropology. Public anthropology is not easily to define but let me refer to Robert Borofsky, quoted on Zero Anthropology:
What is Public Anthropology? « ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Public anthropology engages issues and audiences beyond today’s self-imposed disciplinary boundaries. The focus is on conversations with broad audiences about broad concerns. Although some anthropologists already engage today’s big questions regarding rights, health, violence, governance and justice, many refine narrow (and narrower) problems that concern few (and fewer) people outside the discipline. Public anthropology seeks to address broad critical concerns in ways that others beyond the discipline are able to understand what anthropologists can offer to the re-framing and easing–if not necessarily always resolving–of present-day dilemmas. The hope is that by invigorating public conversations with anthropological insights, public anthropology can re-frame and reinvigorate the discipline.

There are two main principles of public anthropology (that also distinguishes it from applied anthropology):

Public accountability
Attempting to understand the structures that frame and restrict solutions to problems

Craig Calhoun in a recent essay poses two important questions for public social science (H/T ZeroAnthropology and Sexuality and Society):
Public Sphere Forum » Blog Archive » Calhoun

First, what is the relationship between effective participation in public discourse and the maintenance of more or less autonomous academic fields with their own standards of judgment and intellectual agendas? Second, what is the relationship between “public intellectual” work, informing broad discussions among citizens, and “policy intellectual” work informing business or government decision makers?

As Calhoun explains it is not only about reaching a broader public. It is not only about spreading your knowledge which would amount to ‘showing off’ with little bearing on public issues. It is about producing ‘better social science’ that addresses public issues, tests particular social science hypothesis and informs both scientific and public debates. Social scientists should therefore engage with issues that are part of the public debate at that moment (what Calhoun calls ‘real time social science’) based upon reseach already done in the past (even before it came to be a public issue) or by collecting new research material in which the public debate taking place is incorporated. This is important and researchers should not shy away from it (as happens now sometimes, also by me) but there is a risk of course that the public debate and policy concerns determine the research agenda. It would compromise the neutral position of researchers (certainly when dealing with Muslims and Islam which is a highly politicized topic) but it would also compromise one of the great advantages of doing scientific research: the ability to work on particular topics for a long time. Combining both, Calhoun explains:
Public Sphere Forum » Blog Archive » Calhoun

They may be studied in more immediate ways related to current policy dilemmas or in terms of larger and longer lasting patterns. Social science produces public knowledge when it provides historical or comparative context to grasping particular configurations of such issues as well as when it evaluates the results of particular policies.

Calhoun continues by stating that public science and addressing public issues is not just giving answers to questions the public has. It is as much, or even more, about questioning why particular issues are addressed in the way they are addressed by particular people and what the consequences of that are. How are particular issues and the way they are debated related to (changing) historical and cultural contexts, what is taken-for-granted and what does it mean? In my opinion this is (or at least should) should be the focus of this blog and has informed the change from my website Researchpages to Closer. In this sense public anthropology is not the same as applied anthropology.

Who is the public?
One important question to ask, is this blog anthropology in public or public anthropology? Both I hope. And judging by the list of my frequent readers the public of this blog is very mixed: anthropologists, policy-makers, journalists, students, fellow bloggers and (for me very important – see principle 1) my research subjects. This blog, as are other means of publication, provides a channel for dialogue with the social science community but also with other publics for social science knowledge consisting of journalists, policy-makers, politicians, researchgroups, students, movements’ activists, and others (cf. Calhoun).

It is in particular the input provided by research subjects that has proven to be valuable and opening up your research to the people you study, is an important part of doing research. Rex asks at Savage Minds:
Is it unethical to say something about someone that they cannot understand? | Savage Minds

Do anthropologists have a moral obligation to make their work accessible to the people they are writing about? The answer, to me, is an obvious ‘yes’.
[…]
So: is it ethical in principle to say things about people that they cannot understand (technical work) or that is written in a genre they don’t care for or ‘get’ (disciplinarily-defined beauty)?

I fully agree with him. If we do not make our work accessible to the people we write about, we might as well lock or ourselves in our ivory tower and throw away the key. This means that anthropoligists should write better: clear and accessibly. Furthermore, when you do research among a group in a society in which you live yourself and the topic most likely will lead to some headlines in the newspaper, it is foolish to think that you can avoid the group about who you write. If you do not engage with them, they will engage with you and your research in the comments sections of newspapers, blogs and online communities. Many people in my current research project have read my PhD thesis, there have been discussions about it in chatrooms in which I present for my current research and several people emailed me, contacted me in the chatrooms and on MSN wanting to discuss my book and the publicity about it. Opening up your research in fact already begins at the initial stage when you have to explain to your informants what you are doing and why you are there where they are. In my experience, the conversations that follow from this are not a good a way of improving your ‘translation’ skills but also provide relevant input for your research. The same can be said about the questions people asked after reading my book and articles.

As good public science indeed can produce better social science because the public is allowed to question and test the hypothesis of the researcher and even the significance of the whole research. For a very good example see Brigt Dale at the Occational Blog featuring the debates at other blogs based upon interviews with six anthropologists at antropologi.info. This is also the reason why I have chosen not to delete the sometimes very hostile, vile and rude comments on particular posts because I believe also those comments to represent an important take on the issues I address.

Most Commented

Other noteworthy posts in this category include:

Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics (without a doubt the number one hit for this year, addressing one of the important anxieties many people share: the fear for an Islamic takeover)
Coming soon…Fitna V Analysing political propaganda

The last one is number five in a series about Fitna, the movie by Dutch politician Geert Wilders and serves as the basis for three articles I will write (two of them will be published in 2010 I hope). These two entries also score very well in the most viewed ranking:

Most Viewed

As you can see in both lists Dutch and English language contributions are part of this blog. Public anthropology involves, as said, asking who is the public? For anthropologists outside the English speaking world, they also have to ask, is my public native (in my case Dutch) or international? I have chosen to combine both since some Dutch issues are relevant for a wider, international public and because writing in English would mean that my blog would be less accessible for Dutch speaking people. The current development in social sciences that only writing in Anglo-Saxon journals is valued above anything else (or better, the rest doesn’t matter) could lead I’m afraid to a situation in which social sciences are not relevant anymore for native, non-English publics and render the cause for a public anthropology futile or even ridiculous.

Closing statement
This blog is a (modest) attempt to make anthropology publicly relevant and to improve anthropological research. At the same time it is on ongoing experiment to find out what public anthropology actually is and to explore it. Why would I do this? As Maximilian Forte explains very well:
Not Radical Enough: Disengaged Anthropology (1.5) « ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Some might object that anthropology does not need to be publicly engaged, does not need mass audiences, and thus eschew the common goals of both Bunzl and Besteman-Gusterson. I disagree. Anthropology will not reside safely in peace, ensconced in the Ivory Tower, because there too it is suffering from increased marginalization, and that’s in the cases of universities that actually have an anthropology program of some sort. Moreover, any discipline whose purchase covers a wide range of publicly relevant, directly relevant, issues should say something in public. There is no point being a mute bystander as public debates rage about race, the family, violence, religion, and thus act like some dog in the manger

In that blog entry he refers to a discussion in American Anthropologist (2008, vol. 110, no. 1). In November 2009 these articles are open for the public:
The Quest for Anthropological Relevance: Borgesian Maps and Epistemological Pitfalls – Matti Bunzl

In this essay, I critique the currently dominant mode of American sociocultural anthropology. Through a historical reading of canonical texts from the 1970s to the 1990s, I trace some of contemporary anthropology’s limitations and probe their implications for the possibility of a publicly engaged discipline. I focus my critique on the demand for ever-increasing complexity, identifying it as an implicit form of positivism that renders the results of anthropological inquiries increasingly irrelevant to the big questions of the day. Epistemologically speaking, contemporary anthropology is thus not radical enough. In conclusion, I mobilize the Weberian–Boasian tradition as the most viable alternative to sociocultural anthropology’s status quo.

A Response to Matti Bunzl: Public Anthropology, Pragmatism, and Pundits

Discussing only two out of 11 chapters, Matti Bunzl argues that Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (2005) embodies an excessively deconstructive approach that undermines public anthropology by opposing all generalization. In fact, the contributors to the Pundits volume come from a variety of intellectual positions, some unfriendly to deconstructionism. In a book that is deliberately jargon free, the contributors are unified not by postmodernism but by pragmatism. They oppose generalizations that are manifestly ideological and untrue, not all generalizations. The point of the book is not to nitpick generalizations but to unmask media apologetics for neoliberalism and neoconservatism that misuse core terms (e.g., culture, ethnicity, human nature, gender) from the anthropological lexicon. We advocate a revitalized public anthropology based on grounded research, translation of sophisticated anthropological knowledge into accessible English, and a passionate concern for the well-being of those at the sharp end of neoliberal globalization.

A Reply to Besteman and Gusterson: Swinging the Pendulum

In this rejoinder to Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, I clarify that my essay “The Quest for Anthropological Relevance: Borgesian Maps and Epistemological Pitfalls” is not primarily a critique of their volume Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (2005). Instead, I maintain that it takes issue with the current state of sociocultural anthropology and its inability to communicate with a larger public sphere. In conclusion, I reflect on the historical location of my argument, likening my position to advocacy for a swing in the discipline’s epistemological pendulum and finding additional cause for such action in the realities of the current political moment.

The debate is relevant, as Forte shows, for addressing several features of anthropology (such as the critique on generalizations, the tendency to increase ‘complexity’ and sophistication, the problem of othering, the institutional structures, and so on) that influence public anthropology. An issue that I did see addressed anywhere yet, is what happens when you speak out as an anthropoligist on topics that are part of a fierce public and political debate. Two recent cases from the Netherlands are exemplary here. First of all the dismissal of Tariq Ramadan in Rotterdam and the subsequent statement of social scientists from the University of Amsterdam (later followed by the Free University of Amsterdam) stating that Tariq Ramadan should be offered a position in Amsterdam. The people who wrote a public letter about this, were accused in several ways of being a traiter, islamic co-conspirator, leftists and so on. Another, even more striking case, is the report of the Volkskrant newspaper about a report for the Ministry of Home Affairs, in which Geert Wilders appears as a far right extremist. Three researchers are named and after the publication of the newspaper a whole debate came about. Anti-Wilders groups and politicians applauding the conclusion, pro-Wilders groups launching a personal attack against the three researchers. Interesting thing is that the report is not published yet because it is not finished. Therefore, no report but debates about the researchers anyway (or because of it). That is striking in itself, but also tells us something about the climate in which researchers have to work and which I think pose a challenge to public anthropology and the attempt to make anthropology matter. The same happened to me when I blogged about someone in Amsterdam who scratched a commercial posters that depicted women in a abusive way (see the above list of most viewed posts, nummer 1). I don’t know how to deal with it, but I think it is an important issue to reflect about and I will try to publish a series of blog entries about it next year.

All these problems should not lead us to conclusion that it is better to refrain from making anthropology public and retreat in our academic ivory tower. I think I have made clear why. There are several ways in which anthropologists can make their knowledge easily available for a wider audience and receive feedbak about it. A blog is a very good, works for me. Another way is working with journalists as Nancy Scheper-Hughes (certainly an example for me) shows in an issue of Anthropology Today, quoted at Lorenzo’s Antropologi.info. In her view this can help not only responding to public issues, but also making issues public issues as she tried to do with the Organs Watch Project. All of this is a lot of work because it means to work double time; not only responding to teaching obligations and the academic ‘publish or perish’ structure but also for example as I did giving a lecture at one o’clock at night on some obscure chat room that people only care about if they call for jihad or to respond to all of the vile and sometimes threatening comments here in a personal manner trying to find out what the person wants to say.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes: Public anthropology through collaboration with journalists

Paraphrasing Hortense Powdermaker: you want to be a public anthropologist – then do it! I always did. But don’t expect to be rewarded for it. Instead, consider it a precious right and a privilege. Be grateful that, despite the tendency of bureaucratic intuitions toward social con servatism, we can still ‘do what we want and get away with it too!’

Together with my colleague Henk Driessen from Radboud University I’m planning to organizing an international workshop on anthropology and publicity in 2010, I will keep you updated on that. Let me finish by saying thank you to my readers, commenters, colleagues, my informants and all others who have helped me with my weblog and research. And beware: I’m planning to ‘get away with it’ for another 10 years.

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7 comments.

Closing the week 45 – Featuring Theo van Gogh

Posted on November 7th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Most popular on Closer this week:

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Featuring Theo van Gogh (selection in Dutch, see below)
I CARE – News – Internet Centre Anti Racism Europe

Five years ago today Dutch filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam by a fanatical Muslim who was infuriated by Van Gogh’s anti-Islam insults. The killing has been compared with the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London and it boosted already high ethnic tensions. The anniversary of the attack prompted foreign journalists to check on the multicultural tensions and Muslim radicalisation in the Dutch capital. The Netherlands’ immigration issues have remained high on the agenda, fuelled by populist politician Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV). But no attacks, home grown or from outside, have taken place since November 2, 2004. That was the morning Mohammed B. followed Theo van Gogh on his bicycle before he shot him eight times with a handgun. The 47-year-old filmmaker fell to the ground, where his assassin slit his throat and pinned a note to his body with a knife. The note was a death threat to Ayaan Hirsi Ali with whom Van Gogh had made the short film Submission, about the abuse of women under Islam, and called for jihad. B., son of Moroccan immigrants, was born and raised in Amsterdam. “The turnaround in his behaviour happened in this building”, Achmed Marcouch told reporters on a tour of the Amsterdam immigrant neighbourhood Slotervaart last week. Marcouch has been Slotervaart’s borough chairman since 2006 and the building he showed the journalists was the community centre Eigenwijks, where B. was a volunteer. He is now serving a life sentence for the murder.

Internation Musing: Istanbul, Athens, Amsterdam, Patra, Utrecht, and Thessaloniki.: 5 years after the killing of van Gogh

The image of being an open, tolerant society where one could say anything was shattered and Dutch society changed in a fundamental way. Van Gogh was of rude, coarse and – according to many – offensive but his murder was an abhorrent act that can never be justified. The murder also had far-reaching consequences, many analysts believe that Geert Wilders and his far-right Freedom Party wouldn’t be nearly so popular if van Gogh hadn’t been slaughtered.

The general trend in the Netherlands is that”After van Gogh, people are scared to say anything controversial”. Ton Folkertsma, who watched as Mohammed Bouyeri butchered the filmmaker, tells a Dutch paper that his life hasn’t been the same since the murder and that the country has changed, “things are going badly in the Netherlands, things can’t continue as they are. Maybe I’ll be murdered tomorrow, or maybe it will be you”.

Dutchblog Israel: 14/5 years later

Two men, totally different. Their murderers have a lot in common, much more than these two men ever shared. Both the murderers are religious fanatics, one Jewish, the other Muslim. In more than one way, both murderers reached their goal(s). To me it seems that the supporters of both murderers are today stronger than they were when Rabin, resp. Van Gogh were murdered. Yesterday it was five years ago that Van Gogh died in Amsterdam. Tomorrow fourteen years will have passed since Rabin died in Tel Aviv.

nrc.nl – International – Immigrant tensions remain five years after Van Gogh killing

Immigrant tensions remain five years after Van Gogh killing
Published: 2 November 2009 15:03 | Changed: 3 November 2009 10:03
No Islamic terrorist attacks have taken place in the Netherlands since the murder of Theo van Gogh.

The silencing of Theo van Gogh – Salon.com

“I’ll do my best to seriously insult quite a few people.”

Five Years Later: The Death of Dutch Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh :: Culture :: News :: Paste

The cultural fallout of van Gogh’s death in Holland has been compared to the ramifications of 9/11 in the U.S. Several Dutch mosques were burned in retaliation and the government passed laws that all people must carry I.D. It instituted citizen tests for resident aliens, enforced language tests for prospective immigrants, and authorized police to stop people on the street who appeared suspicious.

CBC News – Film – Dutch mark Theo van Gogh killing 5 years on

Documentary films, special reports and a memorial tribute to Theo van Gogh are among the activities taking place in the Netherlands on Monday, five years after the filmmaker was slain by a religious extremist.

Van Gogh, who was an outspoken critic of radical Islam and a descendant of the famed painter, is being remembered by politicians, family, friends and fans as the country reflects on how his violent death in Amsterdam in 2004 changed the nation.

Hate Speech is Not Free Speech, Mr. Wilders and Mr. Horowitz « Muslim Reverie

The fact that you asked me whether or not I condemn the death threats or murder of Theo Van Gogh is insulting and reveals the kind of stereotypes you have about Muslims in general. Explore my blog and you should be able to figure out what I think. How many times do people ask YOU to condemn crimes that you weren’t responsible for? What about Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of Oklahoma City?

Eyerman (Ron), The Assassination of Theo Van Gogh. From Social Drama to Cultural Trauma

A murder like this calls for a meticulous examination of its political and socio-cultural context, which Eyerman provides, along with an analysis of the trauma that the event supposedly caused among the population. The book contains a number of interesting observations. The author presents details about the killer’s biography, for example, that at least this reviewer had not read in the regular press. He makes a thoughtful comparison between Bouyeri and Hirsi Ali as two opposed models of integration. The first had six years of higher education, was active in affairs of his community, then felt he could get no further and embraced a radical faith that put him in opposition to the established majority. The second dropped her faith, was a student likewise and became a successful politician and spokesperson for women’s rights. The author amply discusses whether Hirsi Ali was the killer’s «real target» or Van Gogh along with her. He speculates that Bouyeri had obtained official authorization from a clergyman to «execute» Van Gogh, even though the latter had never been a Muslim. This would include Europe into the geographic area where extremists feel legitimated in killing prominent opponents. A detail that was also unknown to me concerns the video that serves to acquaint newly arrived immigrants with Dutch society. It appears to be available in a full version and a censored one with images of nude breasts and men kissing left out.

3On the other hand, the book contains several mistakes.[…] it is intriguing that Eyerman fails to mention Van Gogh’s words, in writing and meant comically, «what a smell of caramel here; today they burn only the diabetic Jews.» This phrase was cited over and again in the press to underline that, although a murder in order to curb the free word was utterly wrong, Van Gogh was not OK either. In fact, Eyerman quickly passes over Van Gogh’s anti-Semitism, because in the book’s social drama story the Dutch Muslims, in need of protection as a group, have replaced the Jews of the German occupation.

Column: The Dutch Islam debate since Theo van Gogh | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

On an autumn day in 2004, an event occurred on an Amsterdam street corner that came to symbolise a clash between two ideologies. An artist, the ultimate symbol of the Western concept of freedom of expression, was murdered by a Muslim fundamentalist, a believer in the absolute and singular truth of Allah.

Amsterdam grapples with integration since filmmaker’s murder | France 24

Five years after Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam, where half the population is of immigrant origin, the city is grappling with social integration.

“It was as if, before Van Gogh, they had never seen a Muslim in the Netherlands,” Ahmed Marcouch, the Moroccan-origin mayor of Amsterdam suburb Slotervaart, told a recent press event.

“From one day to the next, they realised that Muslims existed and that something had to be done — there was much panic.”

Peter Mooring on the web » November 2, 2004: Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated 911 days after the assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn on May 6, 2002.

I wrote the following article two years ago but want to share it again with you to remember these two great men.

Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Published on March 30, 2007

I had a dream … last night (or was it the day before?) …

After Pim Fortuyn was murdered, on May 6 2002, focus should be changed.
Theo van Gogh decided to make a movie (0605) about the assassination of Fortuyn.
This movie would connect the Dutch secret service to this murder.
About the same time Hirsi Ali was introduced October 2002 out of the blue by Neelie (Smit) Kroes into Dutch right wing political party VVD. Kroes is a protege of the elite in the Netherlands. When newspaper De Volkskrant wanted to print an article about her (financial) connections to a criminal, the paper did not appear that day because of a software error.
The idea was to criminalize the new enemy, i.e. the muslim population. So Theo had to be killed by a muslim.
A Syrian, Abu Khaled, appeared and seemed to be an inspiring figure for van Gogh murderer Mohammed B. and his friends. Abu Khaled was suspected of everything but could move without problems throughout Europe.
To make things more likely Hirshi Ali wanted to make a controversial movie about muslim women.
Of course Theo liked to do that with her, it was controversial!
So they did Submission, a 10 minute film, released on August 29, 2004.
During the post-production of Theo’s movie 0605 about the Pim Fortuyn murder, Mohammed B. murdered Theo on November 2, 2004 leaving a letter for Hirshi Ali on the body of Theo.

DailyAtheist.net » Theo van Gogh, Filmmaker: Assassinated Nov 2, 2004

Monday, Nov 2 is the anniversary of the brutal assassination of Theo van Gogh, controversial filmmaker and director of the short film Submission which dealt with the topic of violence against women in some Islamic societies. To honor his courage I would ask that everyone interested in free speech, reason and freedom from religion tweet “RIP #TheoVanGogh“ at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time to get on Trending Topics as well as throughout the day.

Theo van Gogh: trailblazer for Wilders | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

On 2 November 2004 Mohammed Bouyeri gunned down Dutch film director, writer and opinion maker Theo van Gogh in broad daylight. In the years leading up to his murder, now five years ago, Van Gogh had been a scathing critic of what he liked to refer to as “fascist” Islam.

The debate on the influence of Islam on Dutch society has continued to rage ever since, with right-wing politician Geert Wilders now taking central stage. What role would Theo van Gogh have played in the current debate? And is his murder the reason that Geert Wilders has attracted such a following in the Netherlands?

Misc.
Europe has a religious symbol crisis, too « Erkan’s Field Diary

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Italian schools should remove crucifixes from classroom walls, saying their presence could disturb children who were not Christians.The decision is likely to provoke a controversy in Italy, which is deeply attached to its Roman Catholic roots.

Linguistic Anthropology: The Invention of Saying-things-that-don’t-strictly-accord-with-empirical-fact

One of the things that makes human language different from other forms of communication is the ability to communicate about things that are not currently present, including things we expect or hope will happen in the future, things that have happened in the past, and things that are contrary to fact. In a way, it is this ability to (to paraphrase Gervais’s character in The Invention of Lying) ‘say things that aren’t’ that makes humans human.

Dating and the facebook | Democracy in America | Economist.com

in reality, the late 1950s and early 1960s were marked by immense technological changes (pop music, adolescent car ownership, the Pill) that revolutionised pre-marital sexual relations.

If I had to respond to Mr Brooks’s point, I would start by noting that the facebook had a profound influence on my dating life. Not Facebook, but the facebook—the annual book Harvard used to put out showing every undergraduate’s picture, name, and (if I recall correctly) residential house and city of origin. (Facebook started out as an online version of the facebook.) Back when I was in college, if we caught sight of an attractive prospect of the opposite sex (perhaps whilst attending a fiery anti-British speech by Sam Adams, or a witch-burning), we would look her up in the facebook, avoiding the potentially embarrassing prospect of having to approach her, say something friendly and amusing, and ask her name. Finding her photo in the facebook necessitated a lot of page-turning and picture-gazing, which in turn led to the discovery of other possibly attractive women and was a pleasant way to while away the time. Having finally discovered her background information, we could then keep an ear open for other information about her and figure out how to approach her. This was pretty much exactly the same as what studies show current males spend most of their time on Facebook doing, and it was every bit as creepy. So I assume the existence of a Male Creepiness Constant until experimental evidence proves otherwise.

ASA Globalog :: Wall Street Bonuses: Culture, Identity, and Crisis

I would argue that the fundamental point for examining bonuses is not their irony, strangeness, indexing of out-of-touch privilege, or conspicuous compensation. Rather, in the spirit of bringing anthropological tools to bear on financial analyses, it is important to read Wall Street’s bonus and compensation culture as perhaps the central cultural distillation of the key contradictions and unequal effects of a finance-capital-dominated social economy. To a certain extent, bonuses embody the restructuring of American economic practices and large institutions according to financial values that often mine the productive assets of corporations. And, precisely because Wall Street’s key ethos is often expressed vis a vis bonuses, these compensation schemes can also serve as a culturally useful predictor, indicator, or sign of impending crises.

SOCIALIST UNITY » THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN HOMOPHOBIA AND ISLAMOPHOBIA

Thus ‘Islamophobia’ is now an official of western power, uniting capitalists and workers, in both foreign wars and domestic racism. It is also the most serious contemporary threat to the socialist project of creating a united working class resistance of all races and religions.

Yet this racism is veiled in the language of enlightenment liberalism and secularism. The rightwing thugs of the English Defence League can claim that ‘Islam is not a race’ and that they are not being racist, they are merely standing up for secular humanism. This claim was also made on the Green Left discussion list by my fellow gay rights activists.

The demo that wasn’t | Inayat Bunglawala | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The cancellation of the so-called “March for Sharia” which was to have been held last Saturday by Islam4UK (al-Muhajiroun’s latest incarnation) should be viewed as a clear victory for all those who were fed up with the group’s inflammatory antics.

US clinic denies Muslim doctor right to wear hijab

A medical clinic in Dallas, Texas has sparked controversy after saying a Muslim doctor applying for a job cannot wear her headscarf if hired.

Dr. Hena Zaki of Plano, Texas said Friday that she was shocked to find a no-hat policy at the CareNow clinic extended to her hijab.

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions – NYTimes.com

In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge on Wednesday convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.
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Related
Times Topics: Extraordinary Rendition

The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to coercive interrogation techniques.

They Are Not Alone: A Worldwide Webinar and Fundraiser | MuslimMatters.org

All last week, we have been discussing cases of the highest kind of injustice against Muslim individuals. While Dr. Maher Arar is out and fighting for justice, several other prisoners are depending on the Muslim community to obtain justice for them. The question was brought up quite a few times as to what we can do for these individuals. Well, here is an opportunity. One of these excellent initiatives is the Muslim Justice Initiative. Time to put our money where our mouth is and support these initiatives that seek to bring justice about. And as we saw with the Canadian government’s apology and award to Dr. Arar, Muslims can use the legal system to demand their civil rights.

The many gods of Ilford | Abhinav Ramnarayan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

With its 13,000 gods (and counting) scattered all around India, Hinduism has traditionally had more than its share of warring factions. Accounts of disagreements between devotees of Shiva and Vishnu, the two major gods, go back to 2nd century AD. And contrary to some claims, the caste system is alive and kicking, as is the north-south divide, and naturally these are reflected in places of worship.

But the temple I saw in London had them all (so it seemed) side by side to pick from, and pray to. Some of the deities are so lined up so choc-a-bloc that you could pray to one god, and then shift your bum slightly and pray to a second.

Pickled Politics » Double standards over Fort Hood attack

This Washington Independent blog post highlights the hypocrisy of the American right. To recap: a deranged lone gunman at a US military base, who happened to be a soldier there and a Muslim, shot several army soldiers and wounded others. Apparently, before he started shooting he shouted ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ (God is great). But there is no proof that he was influenced by al-Qaeda or any other terrorist groups.

Dutch
Islamisme in Marokko

Schotelantennes en culturele zelfmoord

Danseres Fatima El Houaria strijdt voor het behoud van de traditionele dans Houaria de Taroudant. De oude Berbercultuur is aan het verdwijnen.
Copyright: Daan Bauwens

28 oktober 2009 (MO) – De Marokkaanse overheid onderneemt nieuwe stappen om het islamisme in te dijken. Volgens analisten een maat voor niets, want de radicalisering heeft nieuwe, onzichtbare wegen gevonden om Marokkaanse huiskamers binnen te sluipen. MO* glipte mee naar binnen en kwam terug met een verhaal over televisie-imams, Arabische mondialisering en de leegroof van het land.

Zou Theo van Gogh nu op Geert Wilders stemmen? | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Op 2 november 2004 werd filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam door Mohammed B. vermoord. Van Gogh wist met zijn uitspraken de woede van moslims op de hals te halen. Die rol lijkt overgenomen te zijn door de PVV-politicus Geert Wilders. Maar zijn de twee eigenlijk wel te vergelijken? De Wereldomroep stelde vier vragen aan een vriend, een opponent en een socioloog.

Het Gesprek » Programma

5 Jaar na de moord op Theo van Gogh zendt Het Gesprek 24 uur lang afleveringen uit van Theo’s interviewprogramma “Gogh’s Zondag”, afgewisseld met reacties van mensen die Theo van Gogh goed hebben gekend onder wie Joost Zwagerman, Job Cohen, Geert Wilders, Huub Stapel, Eddy Terstall, Yvonne Kroonenberg, Theodor Holman, Doesjka van Hoogdalem en Bert van der Veer.

AD Binnenland – Wilders: Van Gogh is in z’n hemd gezet (440674)

DEN HAAG – ‘De elite’ van Nederland heeft Theo van Gogh ‘in zijn hemd gezet’. Dat zegt Geert Wilders, vijf jaar na de moord op de filmer. Als hij de balans opmaakt, komt hij tot de conclusie dat de vrijheid van meningsuiting sindsdien alleen maar verder is ingeperkt.

Fight the Smears: Theo van Gogh opnieuw vermoord!

Propaganda-alert: Alsof één keer een groot mes in je borstkast niet genoeg is, meent de Profiel (KRO) afgelopen zondagavond, nu ook nog een karaktermoord te moeten plegen. De centrale vraag is, waar Theo’s ongebreidelde behoefte aan kwetsen vandaan kwam. Familie, vrienden en vijanden worden geïnterviewd. Allemaal hebben ze wel een verhaal waaruit zou moeten blijken wat een nare, rare, akelige man die Van Gogh eigenlijk wel niet was.

Theo van Gogh amper herdacht « Nieuws

AMSTERDAM – Maandag 2 november wordt in de hoofdstad nauwelijks stil gestaan bij de moord op filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh werd in 2004 op brute wijze omgebracht door de extremistische moslim Mohammed B. in de Linnaeusstraat in Amsterdam-Oost.

Muren – Trouw

In dezelfde maand als de val van de Berlijnse Muur, zal Nederland zich moeten herinneren dat het vijf jaar geleden is dat een filmregisseur en columnist door een moslimfanaticus werd vermoord. Schoorvoetend herinneren, dat wel, en zonder poeha. Alsof de moord op Theo van Gogh door Mohammed B. een incident is dat met schaamte, ongemak of onverschilligheid dient te worden behandeld. ’Theo bijna vergeten’ kopte een krant. En als iets nog wordt gememoreerd, is het vooral de provocatieve en nare geest van het slachtoffer, zoals ’KRO-profiel’ onlangs deed. Over de dader, bijna niets. Over de portee van zijn daad, nog minder. Dat Mohammed B. zuiver in de geest van zijn naamgenoot de profeet handelde, is een splijtzwam die beter kan worden verzwegen. Toch delen die twee Mohammeds met elkaar hetzelfde fanatisme, dezelfde onverdraagzaamheid en wreedheid. In die zin is deze moord geen anekdotisch incident maar een openbaring. Achter de kogels en messen van de moordenaar schuilen helaas tal van geloofsgenoten die, volgens peilingen, deze daad als legitiem beschouwen en met instemming hebben begroet.

Je kunt in bepaalde elitekringen de moord op de ’nare’ Van Gogh relativeren, maar het geluid van zijn ineenstorting op de stenen van de Amsterdamse Linnaeusstraat heeft voor velen de klank van de val van een eigen muur.

Joost Niemöller » Die Theo toch

Op de tv en in de bladen en kranten wordt Theo van Gogh herdacht. Vijf jaar alweer. Arthur van Amerongen en Joost Niemöller kunnen niet achterblijven. Er zijn nog zoveel verhalen onverteld gebleven. En zeker het echte verhaal is nooit in kaart gebracht: Wat had Theo nu precies met de islam?

Theo van Gogh en Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Submission | DeJaap

Maandag is het 5 jaar geleden dat de filmmaker en columnist Theo van Gogh werd vermoord door de moslimextremist Mohammed Bouyeri. Belangrijkste aanleiding voor de moord was de korte film Submission, geschreven door Ayaan Hirsi Ali en geregisseerd door Van Gogh. Submission ging in 2004 in première tijdens het programma Zomergasten.

Met Het Oog Op Morgen » Blog Archief » Zaterdag: 5 jaar na de moord op Theo van Gogh

Theo van Gogh werd op dinsdagochtend, 2 november 2004, vermoord door Mohammed B. Vijf jaar later maken we de balans op. Is Nederland fundamenteel veranderd door die schokkende terreurdaad? We leggen het voor aan publiciste Elsbeth Etty, politicoloog Jean Tillie en aan historicus Maarten van Rossem, die bevriend was met Van Gogh.

Wilders ontsluierd @ Argan « Najiba Abdellaoui

Welk effect heeft de PVV op de islamitische gemeenschap en hoe gaan moslims om met de opkomst van Wilders? Wat is wijsheid en in hoeverre kunnen politici met een Marokkaans/islamitische achtergrond de achterban informeren en helpen met het relativeren van het gedachtegoed van Wilders. Ook is het precies 5 jaar na de moord op Theo van Gogh.

Netherlands: How many Bouyeris live in the Netherlands? | allah.eu

Netherlands: How many Bouyeris live in the Netherlands? On November 2nd the Netherlands will mark five years to the murder of Theo van Gogh. The following is a translation of an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, published in Dutch newspaper Het Parool on October 31, 2009, as part of a series of interviews marking the occasion: She didn’t know Theo very well. They had met each other twice, and had many phone conversations, when they worked on Submission

Netherlands: How many Bouyeris live in the Netherlands?

On November 2nd the Netherlands will mark five years to the murder of Theo van Gogh. The following is a translation of an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, published in Dutch newspaper Het Parool on October 31, 2009, as part of a series of interviews marking the occasion:

PAROOL: AMSTERDAM – Hirsi Ali: islamdebat is mislukt

De vrijheid van meningsuiting is in Nederland niet gewaarborgd. De moord op Theo van Gogh, maandag vijf jaar geleden, betekende het failliet van de rechtsstaat. Dat zegt Ayaan Hirsi Ali vandaag in een interview met Het Parool. ”Hij had desnoods tegen zijn wil beschermd moeten worden.”

waar werd oprechter trouw, dan tussen man en vrouw: Vijf Jaar Later

Waar was jij toen je hoorde dat Theo van Gogh vermoord was?
-In die tijd keek ik nog regelmatig op Fok.nl. Wat is er toch veel veranderd. Nou is het allemaal Geenstijl wat de klok slaat.
Ja, maar waar was je?

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Geenstijl.nl & Marokko.nl

Posted on November 7th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Toen enige tijd geleden soldaat Adzin Chadli werd gedood in Afghanistan, waren de brute opmerkingen op Marokko.nl niet van de lucht.
C L O S E R » Blog Archive » Geenstijl – ‘Gelukkig is het geen Nederlander’

1)”Ik durf de loyaliteit van islamitische militairen wel degelijk in twijfel (goed lezen: in twijfel) te trekken”
2) “Ja waar gehakt wordt vallen spaanders. Had ie maar een vak moeten leren.”
3) “één kudtmarokkaan minder, nog een heel rifgebergte te gaan.”
4)”mudderfuckers”
5) “Ik vind het erg dat hij is overleden en wens zijn familie sterkte. Maar uiteindelijk kan ik mij er nul zorgen om maken. We horen daar niet te zitten. Risico van het vak.”
6) “Hier leggen we de mossels in de watten en uit pure dankbaarheid schieten ze ons daar dood. In beide gevallen mogen we miljarden betalen voor het privilege. Ja, de islam is een echte verrijking van het Nederlandse bestaan.”
7) “Maar ben benieuwd of die kaffers nu ook zo tof doen over de dood van deze soldaat… respectloos kut gebroed is het…”
8) “Itt wat Bush en de mosilmknecht Obama bezweren is het Westen wel degelijk in oorlog met de islam. Moslims horen niet in het Nederlandse leger. Deze gast zxal ws slechts culturele moslim maken. Misschien zet het zijn clan aan het denken over de sekte waarvan ze slaaf zijn.”
9) “Bovendien is hij beroepssoldaat, hij heeft er zelf voor gekozen en dan is het (erg plat uitgedrukt natuurlijk) toch je ‘eigen schuld’”
10) “Ik kan er niet zo mee zitten eerlijk gezegd. Het is oorlog. Nederland wil meespelen om de banden met de VS niet in gevaar te brengen en dus vallen er doden. Het is niet wachten of er een 20ste dode zal vallen. Het is gewoon wachten wanneer. En dan kan het RIP’en en platgooi geschreeuw weer opnieuw beginnen.”
11) “Finnen zijn zijn cultureel gehandicapten die in bontkraag-sportschoen-outfit mensen beroven, ambtenaren het leven zuur maken en in zijn geheel de sfeer op straat verzieken.
Deze soldaat was geen fin.
Dit was een Nederlander.”
12) “Geen militair is verplicht er heen te gaan, maar als je graag RAMBO wilt spelen zijn de gevolgen voor jou, en dan niet zeuren als er doden vallen, want ze schieten met echte bommen en granaten.”
13) “Man was zoon van een Hollandse moeder, die getrouwd was met een Marokkaanse man. Dat maakt hem dus automatisch fin. ”
14) “Jongens dit is dweilen met de koran open”
15) “azdin.. gelukkig geen nederlander”

Geenstijl.nl zat er natuurlijk bovenop en publiceerde screenshots van de gewraakte uitspraken (en niet eens de meest ernstige overigens, daar waren ze te laat voor en hadden ze niet goed genoeg voor gelezen). Dat is begrijpelijk, maar ook hypocriet aangezien de bovenstaande 15 uitspraken niet van Marokko.nl zijn, maar van Geenstijl.nl. Het bezwaar, ook begrijpelijk, tegen Marokko.nl is dat men gesubsidieerd wordt en je zou dus kunnen stellen dat de overheid grove uitspraken over Nederlandse militairen subsidieert. Niet helemaal terecht, want men subsidieert een discussiesite, niet een site met één bepaalde boodschap. Hetzelfde kan gezegd worden voor Geenstijl.nl. Het ministerie van Defensie adverteert op Geenstijl.nl voor de werving van soldaten. Ook daar zou dan de overheid meebetalen aan grove uitspraken.

Dat is natuurlijk wel een belangrijk verschil van inzicht. Subsidieer je een discussiesite en loop je dus bewust het risico dat er ook onwelgevallige meningen op staan of subsidieer je met de bedoeling dat er slechts één bepaalde mening (of meningen binnen door de overheid bepaalde grenzen) op staat? Dat laatste houdt de boel lekker rustig, maar zal waarschijnlijk betekenen dat zowel Geenstijl.nl als Marokko.nl hun aantrekkelijkheid verliezen. Dat eerste benadert het dichtst het ideaal van een vrije publieke ruimte (maar niet persé rationeel, burgerlijk en democratisch) en zorgt ervoor dat een site als Marokko.nl en ook Geenstijl.nl hun functie als barometer van de samenleving houden.

Na wat al te enthousiaste reacties op Marokko.nl over de aanslagen in Mumbai stelde minister Van der Laan een onderzoek in. Daar zijn nu de resultaten van bekend:
VROM – Van der Laan: afspraken met marokko.nl voor beter beheer website

In een brief aan de Tweede Kamer stelt Van der Laan geen enkel verband te willen zien tussen enerzijds discriminerende uitlatingen of haatzaaien én anderzijds subsidies van VROM/WWI voor de exploitanten.

Onderzoek naar drie websites (Marokko.nl, Islamwijzer.nl en Maroc.nl) wees op dat moment uit dat op de verschillende sites van Marokko.nl en Maroc.nl uitlatingen en citaten zijn aangetroffen die als haatzaaiend, discriminerend en/of beledigend kunnen worden ervaren. Dit gold niet voor de Islamwijzer.nl.
Maatregelen

Met het oog op de subsidie heeft minister Van der Laan meerdere gesprekken gevoerd met de exploitanten over verbeteringen in het beheer van de sites. De gesprekken hadden een constructief karakter. Marokko.nl heeft diverse maatregelen aangekondigd waaronder de inzet van getrainde moderators voor meer ondersteuning. De gemaakte afspraak moet leiden tot een strikt moderatiebeleid waarin discriminatie en haatzaaien geen plaats hebben. Maroc.nl heeft in het verleden al een slag gemaakt en sluit zich aan bij de gemaakte afspraken.

Minister Van der Laan benadrukt dat de afspraken met de exploitanten tot stand zijn gekomen vanuit de mogelijkheden die de subsidierelatie met deze partijen bood. Daarnaast heeft de minister het Meldpunt Discriminatie Internet opdracht gegeven onderzoek te laten doen naar het moderatiebeleid van een aantal grote Nederlandse webfora om beter inzicht te krijgen in de randvoorwaarden voor goed beheer. Ook bespreekt Van der Laan met de leden van het kabinet het onderwerp subsidie voor internetprojecten in een bredere context om tot een eenduidige lijn te komen.

De subsidie voor Marokko.nl, Maroc.nl en Islamwijzer.nl wordt conform planning in 2009 afgebouwd.

En Marokko.nl belooft heel braaf:
PAROOL: MEDIA – Marokko.nl belooft beter beheer website

De exploitant van website Marokko.nl belooft het beheer van de site te verbeteren en vanaf januari discriminerende en haatzaaiende uitspraken binnen een uur te verwijderen. Dat is de uitkomst van een overleg tussen minister Eberhard van der Laan (Integratie) en de exploitant.

Nou vraag ik me wel af hoe ze dat willen doen. Ook bij Geenstijl.nl glipt er wel eens wat doorheen:
Voor wie dacht dat op GeenStijl alles kan

Jouw reactie (“Op landverraad staat de doodstraf: Tjibbe Joustra moet voor het executiepeloton.”) was voor het NCTb [“Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding”] reden aangifte te doen bij de politieteam bedreigde politici. Afgelopen week heeft de officier van justitie middels een vordering jouw IP opgeëist.

Wij hebben daarop onze advocaat geraadpleegd met de vraag of wij deze vordering naast ons neer konden leggen, maar dat blijkt niet het geval te zijn. Zo ben je als website-beheerder verplicht in geval van strafbare feiten aan zo’n vordering gehoor te geven. Zo niet, dan volgt inbeslagname, hetgeen zelfs zou kunnen leiden dat GS (tijdelijk) op zwart moet. Zie het als een huiszoeking, je bent in zo’n geval verplicht de politie binnen te laten. GS staat niet boven de wet, dus voor ons geldt deze regel ook gewoon.

Bovendien was jouw reactie in strijd met onze huisregels en had dus onmiddellijk moeten worden beloond met een ban. Dat is niet gebeurd, hetgeen spijtig is. Maar met 10.000 reacties per dag wil er nog wel eens iets tussendoor schieten. (…)

Op Marokko.nl gaat het (volgens de beheerder) om 50.000 berichten per dag. Natuurlijk schiet er daar ook wel eens wat tussendoor, dat is wat Albert Benschop, in de Volkskrant de Wet van behoud van bagger, noemt:
Nuttige kijk op de onderbuik – Multimedia – de Volkskrant

‘Als een vuilnisman mijn straat in Amsterdam-Centrum opruimt en aan het einde is beland, dan ligt het begin weer vol met rotzooi. Zo is het ook met zo’n forum dat 24 uur per dag en zeven dagen in de week toegankelijk is.’

Verder komen de gewraakte uitspraken niet alleen van allochtone Nederlanders. Na de moord op Theo van Gogh was de toestroom van Stormfront mensen zo groot, dat het volledig uit de hand liep. Ook nu zouden er autochtone Nederlanders op komen:

Mahdaoui: ‘Zo’n 20 procent is een bezoeker van GeenStijl – na een oproep op die website – of een aanhanger van de PVV. Die komen om te provoceren.’

Volgens Benschop gaat het nog een stap verder. ‘Die bezoekers maken soms een profiel aan als Mohammed21 om met extreme uitspraken Marokko.nl in diskrediet te brengen. Vervolgens zeggen ze wat een rotzooi het bij de website is.’ Hij meent dat bij GeenStijl soms daartoe wordt opgeroepen.

Let wel dat maakt op zich voor de discussie niet veel uit wie die uitspraken doet. Dat ze gedaan worden, daar gaat het om.

Ambroos Wiegers van GeenStijl ontkent dat dergelijke berichten door zijn redactie worden geschreven. ‘Zo spelen wij het spelletje niet. We schrijven wel vaak over Marokko.nl, omdat zij uit zichzelf vreemde uitspraken doen.’ Hij sluit niet uit dat een bezoeker van zijn website in een reactie zo’n oproep zou kunnen doen. ‘Maar daar zitten we bovenop.’

Ambroos Wiegers praat hier wel met een heel dik pak boter op z’n hoofd. (Ok, liegt gewoon.) Uit zichzelf doet Marokko.nl niet vreemdere uitspraken als Geenstijl.nl. Dat doen de bezoekers misschien wel. Net als de bezoekers van Wiegers zo geeft hij terecht aan. Daarbij schroomt de redactie van Geenstijl.nl niet om de dingen aan te dikken of uit hun dikke duim te zuigen zoals we al eerder gezien hebben. Marokko.nl is daarbij een nogal makkelijk doelwit omdat daar altijd wel iemand uit de bocht vliegt zoals op ieder forum en zoals ook op Geenstijl.nl Wat Geenstijl.nl doet is dan ook niet zozeer het blootleggen van misstanden, maar het scheppen, uitvergroten en verdraaien van infotainment issues. Natuurlijk is Geenstijl.nl niet zo dom om zelf op te roepen rotzooi te gaan schoppen op Marokko.nl of een andere site, maar men weet van tevoren dat het gebeurt en (zo vertelde de redactie mij zelf) de berichten worden ook zo geschreven. Of een bericht daarbij op waarheid berust, doet er niet toe, zo geeft men ook zelf toe zonder al te veel ruggengraat overigens want men raakt daar vrij overspannen van mensen die doorvragen.

Niettemin het punt dat Geenstijl aan de orde stelde is principieel en raakt ook Geenstijl.nl zelf. Moet de overheid websites subsidiëren (direct/indirect/via advertentieruimte) waar onwelgevallige meningen (voor wie dan ook?) worden geuit? En waar leg je de grens?

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Drie nieuwe sites: Hagar-Sarah, Yakini Time en At-Tibyan Nederland

Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere, ISIM/RU Research.

Ik heb maar weer eens drie nieuwe sites toegevoegd aan mijn toch al ellenlange en onoverzichtelijke linklijst:
Hagar Sarah

Met deze website willen wij een bijdrage leveren aan de dialoog tussen joden, christenen en moslims. Deze dialoog moet ons inziens gevoerd en voortgezet worden opdat wij van elkaars traditie leren hoe wij samen kunnen leven. Dat is niet altijd eenvoudig, soms roept dat spanningen op, maar het doorbreken en oplossen daarvan geeft meer diepgang in de relatie. Met onze voorbeelden uit de praktijk hopen wij een handreiking te bieden aan beginnende dialooggroepen.

De naam is een verwijzing naar aartsvader en profeet Abraham (Ibrahim) die getrouwd was met Sarah.

De moslima van Vermeer door Johannes Hogebrink

Omdat Sarah geen kinderen kon krijgen bood zij haar slavin Hagar aan als draagmoeder. Hager baart Ismael (Ismail) de aartsvader van de Arabieren. Later krijgt Sarah toch een kind; Izaak (Ishaq) die de aartsvader van de joden wordt. Het verhaal in de Koran wijkt hier iets van af. Hagar wordt achtergelaten door Ibrahim in de woestijn en op zoek naar water loopt zij op en neer tussen de heuvels Safa en Marwa waar ze de bron Zamzam vindt. De bedevaartgangers naar Mekka herhalen dit verhaal door zeven keer op en neer te lopen en vaak nemen zij ook Zemzem water mee terug (heb zelf nog een flesje staan dat ik gekregen heb). De joodse, christelijke en islamitische vrouwen van de adviesgroep Hagar-Sarah hebben er (toepasselijk denk ik) voor gekozen om de moeders van beide aartsvaders Ismail en Ishaq te nemen voor de naam van hun dialooggroep.

Yakini betekent waarheid. Yakini Time is een radioprogramma over islam en heeft een eigen weblog
Yakini Time!

Yakini Time! De web-log van het leukste radioprogramma over islam voor Antillianen, Surinamers, Caapverdianen en natuurlijk de rest van Nederland!

Ik kende het niet, maar het is een interessant initiatief vanuit een groep moslims waar we nauwelijks (in het bijzonder Antilliaanse en Kaapverdiaanse Nederlanders) iets van horen. Stichting Yakini die achter de website en het radioprogramma zit wil op een laagdrempelige manier informatie geven over de islam.Yakini Time radio kun je HIER vinden (klik links op Live radio en klik op Live Rotterdam Fm 106.5), iedere woensdag om 21:00 uur. Er wordt informatie gegeven over islam, nieuws over moslims en allochtone Nederlanders en er is Koran te beluisteren evenals anasheed en moslim hiphop.

De Tibyan (uiteenzetting) wordt wel gezien als een van de meest belangrijke bronnen over de gebeurtenissen in Al-Andalus (Andalusië) gedurende de elfde eeuw. Het is een autobiografie van ‘Abd Allah bin Buluggin, emir van de Taifa van Granada van 1073 tot 1090. Zijn verhaal bevat vele verslagen van strijd tegen christelijke en andere staten.
« At-Tibyan Nederland

Deze website is gemaakt voor informatie over de islam, met namen informatie over zaken in de islam waar mensen hun monden over houden of onder de tafel schuifen. zaken die weinig of helemaal niet worden besproken in de islam. Of waar men weinig kennis van heeft, zaken die je niet zo makkenlijk kunt vinden in de nederlandse taal!

Onze Belangrijkste Punten:

-Tawheed (Al Kufr Bi Taghout Wa Imanu Billah)
-Jihad (De Hedendaagse Oorlog In Onze Landen)
-Kufr Akbar met name Kufrul-Istibdaal: Ongeloof door Allah’s Wetten proberen te vervangen
-Zaken Waar Onze Ummah Door Heen Gaat Op Dit Moment

Er zijn al eerder Engelstalige en Nederlandstalige Tibyan sites geweest en ook diverse Nederlandse sites waar vertalingen van Tibyan Publications te vinden zijn (waren). Eén van de populairste vertalingen was aanvankelijk de Nederlandse vertaling van een lezing van Abdullah Azzam ‘In the hearts of Green Birds’ (In de harten van groene vogels) waarin bijzondere verhalen van martelaren uit Bosnië naar voren kwamen. Centraal in die verhalen staat de bescherming die God zou geven aan hen die strijden tegen onrecht en onderdrukking. Ik weet niet of er een relatie is met de huidige Tibyan site, maar het thema van de strijd tegen onrecht en onderdrukking is in ieder geval wel de rode draad van Tibyan Nederland.

Yakini Time en At-Tibyan Nederland maken deel uit van de Blogview.

1 comment.

Closing the week 44 – Featuring Human Rights

Posted on October 31st, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Most popular on Closer this week:

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Human Rights

Lost in Transit | Human Rights Watch

Insufficient Protection for Unaccompanied Migrant Children at Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport
October 29, 2009

In this 60-page report, Human Rights Watch concludes that France’s system of detaining and deporting unaccompanied migrant children who arrive in Paris by air puts them at serious risk.

“We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them” | Human Rights Watch

Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang’s Protests
October 20, 2009

This 44-page report documents the enforced disappearances of 43 Uighur men and teenage boys who were detained by Chinese security forces in the wake of the protests.

Iraq: Bring Bombers to Justice | Human Rights Watch

Iraq: Bring Bombers to Justice
October 28, 2009

“No political goal or grievance can legitimize any such assault…This widespread and indiscriminate killing is reprehensible and morally indefensible.”
Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director

(New York) – Devastating bomb attacks in Baghdad on October 25, 2009, were an assault on the fundamental principle of respect for life, and Iraqi authorities have a duty to ensure that anyone found to have contributed to their execution is apprehended and brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said today.

Libya: Drop Charges against Journalist | Human Rights Watch

The Libyan government should investigate allegations of sexual harassment in a state-run residence for women who had been orphaned instead of charging the journalist who reported the story with criminal defamation, Human Rights Watch said today.

Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine

Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine
By Alison Weir

In August Sweden’s largest daily newspaper published an article containing grisly evidence suggesting that Israel had been taking Palestinian internal organs. The article, by veteran photojournalist Donald Bostrom, called for an international investigation to discover the facts.1

[In this photograph taken March 22, 2007, Vasile Dimineti holds a picture of his 24-year-old son, who died a year after selling his kidney. The family lives in the impoverished Moldovan village of Mingir, where about 40 of its 7,000 residents are thought to have sold a kidney. AFP photo/Daniel Mihailescu/Files]

In this photograph taken March 22, 2007, Vasile Dimineti holds a picture of his 24-year-old son, who died a year after selling his kidney. The family lives in the impoverished Moldovan village of Mingir, where about 40 of its 7,000 residents are thought to have sold a kidney. AFP photo/Daniel Mihailescu/Files

Israel immediately accused Bostrom and the newspaper of “anti-Semitism,” and charged that suggesting Israelis could be involved in the illicit removal of body parts constituted a modern “blood libel” (medieval stories of Jews killing people for their blood).2

Numerous Israeli partisans repeated these accusations, including Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, who asserted that the story was “merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of European funded and promoted anti-Israel hate.”3 Others suggested that the newspaper was “irresponsible” for running such an article.4

The fact is, however, that Israeli organ harvesting—sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries—has been documented for many years.

Saudi Arabia: King Overturns 60-Lashes Verdict Against Journalist | Human Rights Watch

The swift action today by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to overturn a sentence of 60 lashes against a Saudi television producer sent an important message to the country’s courts, Human Rights Watch said today. King Abdullah should also overturn the sentence against the man at the center of the case, who had spoken about sex on a television show, and initiate reforms to strengthen the rights to freedom of expression and to a fair trial, Human Rights Watch said.

Iran: Overturn Death Sentences, Other Unfair Convictions | Human Rights Watch

The Iranian Judiciary should immediately quash the convictions that have been handed down by the Revolutionary Court in Tehran since the end of September against defendants accused of inciting post-election unrest, Human Rights Watch said today. The convictions all stem from unfair trials in which the accused were denied access to lawyers.

Ramzy Baroud: Abbas and the Goldstone Report

Those who hoped that the Israeli atrocities in Gaza would rekindled a sense of remorse among the egotistical elites in Ramallah, were surely disappointed when the PA withdrew its draft resolution supporting recommendations made by South African Judge Richard Goldstone. The Goldstone report is the most comprehensive, and transparent investigation as of yet into what happened in Gaza during the 23-day war. It decried Israeli terror, and chastised Palestinians as well. But the focus on Israel undoubtedly and deservingly occupied much of the nearly 600-page report. The next step was for the Human Rights Council to send the report for consideration to the United Nations Security Council, which was to study the findings for a possible referral of the case to the International Criminal Court e in the Hague. Such a move would have been historic. Knowing the full implications of such a possibility, Hamas accepted the report’s recommendations in full. Israel, backed by its traditional US ally, rejected it, leveling all sorts of accusations and insults on the world-renowned Jewish judge.

How the UN vote on the Goldstone Report could help Israeli-Palestinian peace | Marc Lynch

The UN Human Rights Council has passed by a large majority (25-6) a resolution endorsing the findings of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war. It plans to send its recommendations to the General Assembly and to ask the Security Council to monitor the recommended independent probes of the report’s allegations. While the U.S. and five others voted no, it was extremely striking that several major powers — including the UK and France — refrained from voting. Pakistan, our crucial ally in the Afghanistan mission, voted in favor along with Egypt and 23 others. The Israeli government is outraged, and the level of rhetoric is hotter than ever.

What was the Obama administration thinking with the Goldstone report? | Marc Lynch

I’m still trying to figure out the thinking behind the Obama administration’s rapid moves to block the Goldstone report on the Gaza war. Without even getting into the moral issues involved or the accuracy of the report, the most likely tactical considerations behind the administration’s decision seem short-sighted. Its move likely responded to the intense public and private Israeli campaign against the report, and probably aimed at winning back some positive relations with the Israelis and maintaining momentum on the peace process.

PA ‘won’t oppose war crimes trials for Hamas militants’ – Haaretz – Israel News

Goldstone slams UN council for ignoring Hamas war crimes

South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who headed the United Nations investigation over the Gaza offensive, criticized on Friday the Human Rights Council’s decision to endorse the report his commission had compiled.

Goldstone told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps before the vote that the wording of the resolution was unfortunate because it included only censure of Israel. He voiced hope that the Human Rights Council would alter the wording of the draft.

Think Tank: new ideas from the 21st Century: Your honour is taking an injudicious kick at Israel – Times Online

Judge Richard Goldstone’s condemnatory report on Israel’s actions in Gaza has been dismissed as hopelessly one-sided by neutral observers — The Economist, for example, denounced the report’s “wilful blindness”. Goldstone’s “thimbleful of poison” has, it says, made the peace process all the harder.

The UN Human Rights Council has endorsed Judge Richard Goldstone’s controversial report accusing both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the 2008-09 conflict in the Gaza Strip. The council has asked the UN Security Council to refer the report’s conclusions to the International Criminal Court if the two sides fail to conduct their own investigations.

Goldstone’s report has been dismissed as hopelessly one-sided not only by the Israelis but by many neutral observers, with both the European Union and United States dissenting both on its substance and its suggestion that alleged Israeli war crimes should be judged not by Israeli courts but by the International Criminal Court.

Goldstone, Israel’s Frankenstein’s monster – Haaretz – Israel News

I put off reading the Goldstone report the same way I put off scheduling a colonoscopy. I now realize it was for many of the same reasons. You know it’s going to be tremendously uncomfortable, you don’t want to know what they’re going to find, and the consequences could be life-threatening. I know that I am not alone. Despite the many people who have made strident declarations about the report, few have actually read it, end to end.

ZNet – Gaza Q&A

List of Questions

Click on a section title to jump to that section or on a question number to jump to that question.

Introduction
1. Doesn’t Israel have the right to defend itself and its population from rocket attacks?

Gaza
2. While conquests in wars of aggression are clearly illegal, didn’t Israel obtain the West Bank and Gaza as the result of a defensive war against an attack waged by neighboring Arab states?

3. Hasn’t Israel withdrawn from Gaza, thereby ending its occupation?

4. Regardless of whether the occupation legally continues, didn’t Israel give up its settlements and its military bases in Gaza?

5. Why should Israel have an obligation to open its borders with or transmit electricty or fuel to Gaza? Doesn’t it have the sovereign right to close its borders as it wishes?

6. Gaza shares a land border with Egypt. Why is Israel blamed for cutting off Gaza’s borders?

Hamas
7. Didn’t Hamas just use the Israeli disengagement from Gaza as an opportunity to launch rockets at Israel without provocation?

8. How did Israel and the West react to Hamas’s election victory?

9. How could Hamas be a partner for peace? Didn’t they refuse the three U.S.-Israeli conditions: that they recognize Israel, renounce violence, and agree to accept all agreements previously accepted by the Palestinian Authority?

10. Hasn’t Hamas refused to ever accept the existence of Israel?

11. Doesn’t Hamas support Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Semitism?

12. Is Hamas a terrorist organization?

13. How can Israel be accused of terrorism since it doesn’t intentionally kill civilians, and views all civilian deaths that it causes as regrettable accidents?

14. Isn’t Hamas’s firing of inaccurate rockets a violation of international humanitarian law?

15. Does the fact that Israel has killed civilians justify Palestinian attacks on civilians?

16. Didn’t Hamas kidnap an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit?

17. Didn’t Hamas launch a military coup against Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in Gaza?

18. Isn’t Hamas just a pawn of Iran?

The Lull
19. What were the terms of the June 2008 ceasefire with Israel?

20. What did the lull terms say about the smuggling in of weapons?

21. What happened during the lull?

22. Wasn’t it legitimate for Israeli troops to go into Gaza to destroy a tunnel being used for a planned kidnapping?

23. Why was the lull not extended?

24. Can Hamas be trusted not to break truces and ceasefires?

25. Given the barrage of rockets that was launched from Gaza after the lull ended on December 19, did Israel have any alternative to a military attack?

26. If the cease-fire had been extended, couldn’t Hamas have smuggled in rockets of longer and longer range until even Tel Aviv was vulnerable? Doesn’t that mean that any new ceasefire would have had to include a provision to prevent weapons smuggling, and hence would have been unacceptable to Hamas?

The Conduct of Operation Cast Lead
27. What does it mean to say that Israel should have responded proportionately?

28. Since Hamas places its military assets in civilian areas, thus using the population as human shields, isn’t Hamas responsible for all the harm to civilians?

29. Israel calls the homes it is planning to attack and drops leaflets warning civilians to get away from military targets. Doesn’t that meet its obligation to protect the civilian population?

30. Has Israel been intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza?

31. Haven’t the vast majority of those killed by Israel been, not civilians, but terrorists?

32. Aren’t there many things we don’t know yet? Shouldn’t we reserve judgment until all the facts are in?

33. Are Israelis unanimous in backing their government policy?

The United States
34. What’s been the role of the United States?

Shared Values

Philosophers have debated since time immemorial about whether there are such things as universal values. There is agreement that shared values exist on a cultural level. Specific societies all have norms and values that are derived from custom, tradition, or religious belief. The dispute is whether there are any values that transcend the confines of a particular society or culture and are shared by all of humanity.

The dispute hinges on the question of the true nature of values. Is there an absolute and objective standard of what is good? Is “good” something universal? Or is it always relative and subjective, dependent on the interests of an individual or group?

This is a point of fierce philosophical debate that has engendered numerous schools of ethical thought, including utilitarianism, pragmatism, and idealism, as well as a host of applications for economics, politics, and political science. I will not dwell on each of these schools of thought on its own. Rather, I will discuss two general philosophical tendencies, that of moral relativism and that of universalism. Then I will discuss what Islam teaches about this matter.

Shadi Sadr wins 2009 Human Rights Defenders Tulip Award / news / Home – Human Rights Defenders Tulip

Shadi Sadr wins 2009 Human Rights Defenders Tulip Award

20 October 2009. The Iranian human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr has won the 2009 Human Rights Defenders Tulip for her courage in championing the human rights of her fellow citizens. Foreign minister Maxime Verhagen will present the award in The Hague on Monday 9 November.

Yes…niqab…again
‘People think you’re oppressed’ if you wear the niqab – thestar.com

The bright green Calvin Klein scarf wrapped neatly around Maryam Rana’s head comes as a bit of a surprise. So do the red flats peeking out from under her black skirt, as she takes a mid-morning walk around her Mississauga neighbourhood.

Rana, clearly, has a sense of style. She is also wearing a black cloth over much of her face.

This is the niqab, Canada’s most controversial article of clothing.

French minister: ‘No burqas in the street’ – Europe- msnbc.com

PARIS – France’s immigration minister on Sunday proposed a national debate on French “national identity,” saying it should not include face-covering Muslim veils.

“For me, no burqas on the street,” Eric Besson said on LCI television, referring to the all-encompassing veils such as those worn in Afghanistan. But he didn’t directly suggest a ban, saying it was up to lawmakers to decide whether that would be the most effective measure.

“The burqa runs counter to national values,” he said, saying such veils are an affront to women’s rights and the French commitment to equality.

Brian Lilley: The right to wear a burka – Holy Post

Brian Lilley: The right to wear a burka
Posted: October 22, 2009, 10:01 PM by Matt Gurney
Brian Lilley, Holy Post, Burka Ban

I’ll admit that passing by women covered from head to toe and not being able to see their eyes does make me uneasy at times. For me this is not just theoretical either, shopping in my part of Ottawa does put me in contact with women who sport the hijab, the niqab and yes, I’ve even seen a burka or two.

This obsession with clothes is wearing a little thin – The National Newspaper

What women wear (or don’t) is an obsession as old as time. In the UK they’re been arguing over whether airlines can force flight attendants to wear high heels, and unions want them banned from every workplace. In France, it’s about banning the burqa. The arguments sound the same.

What is it about our clothes that attracts so much attention, when menswear doesn’t? No one ever seems to call the fashion police about a man’s wardrobe offence, no matter how much of an eyesore it is.

Cambridge News | Latest News From In & Around Cambridge City | Latest Sports, Jobs & Business News in Cambridge Newspaper – ‘You can don burkas on graduation day’

The rules have been changed after Scottish students demanded they be allowed to wear kilts.

A Cambridge University spokesman said: “Religious dress and cultural observations are allowed. Students are required to wear dark clothing and dark undergarments.

“Military uniform is allowed at the discretion of the college. This was clarified in 2005 when the ban on wearing kilts was lifted.

” We would allow the wearing of the full burka if that’s what the student wore day to day. So far we have had no requests to wear the burka.”

Misc. news from Europe

German man on trial for stabbing Muslim woman – CNN.com

Berlin, Germany (CNN) — A German man accused of stabbing to death a pregnant Muslim woman in a Dresden courtroom went on trial Monday — in the same court and amid tight security.

The defendant — a 29-year-old unemployed ethnic Russian — is accused of stabbing Marwa El-Sherbini 18 times in front of her 3-year-old son during a defamation hearing in the court in July.

WRS | Cautious welcome to anti-forced marriage plan

Cautious welcome to anti-forced marriage plan

Campaigners have welcomed government plans to impose tougher penalties on those found guilty of imposing forced marriage.

Simferopol Journal – Crimean Mosque Project Stirs Debate and Trauma – NYTimes.com

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Chunks of limestone, by the tens of thousands, are strewn in piles on a waterside lot here where one of Europe’s largest mosques is scheduled to rise. But the only soul around is a wizened caretaker in a tent, watching over what seems like another grandiose project gone bust with the financial crisis.

James Hill for The New York Times

Ethnic Russian officials in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, have held plans to build a mosque, angering the Tatar community.

The trouble with the project, though, has nothing to do with money.

It is hinted at in the pieces of limestone themselves, many of which have been brought to the lot in protest and etched with the names of people who once lived here on the Crimean Peninsula, were deported by Stalin and never returned.

The mosque was supposed to signify the revival of those expelled, the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group that suffered as wretched a fate as any under Communism. But with work held up by local authorities, the plan has instead stirred up a dispute involving politics, communal grievances, international tensions and historic traumas.

France to launch national pride campaign in battle against Islamic fundamentalism | Mail Online

France is to adopt a series of measures to ‘reaffirm pride’ in the country and combat Islamic fundamentalism.

They include everybody receiving lessons in the nation’s Christian history and children singing the national anthem.

Using words which infuriated ethnic minority groups and Socialist opponents, immigration minister Eric Besson also said he wanted ‘foreigners to speak better French’.

Swedes more positive toward immigrants: study – The Local

The number of Swedes reporting positive experiences with immigrants is on the rise. The most positive reports come from women, young people and individuals with tertiary education. However, more people are critical of the wearing of the Muslim veil (or hijab) in schools and workplaces, according to a new study.

flandersnews.be: Moroccan faith healer arrested

Belgian judicial authorities have arrested a Moroccan faith healer following the death of 18-year-old Layla Hachichi. The woman died as a result of burns. Her lifeless remains were recovered from her parents’ home three weeks ago.

Muslims: Terrorism is against Islam – Politiken.dk

Muslims: Terrorism is against Islam
The Joint Council of Danish Muslims distances itself from those arrested in the U.S. on chagres of panning a terrorist attack against Jyllands-Posten.

Spain Imams Launch Umbrella Body – IslamOnline.net – News

VALENCIA – Spanish Muslims launched this week an independent, self-regulatory body to train imams in the southern European country.

“The Islamic Union of Imams and Preachers in Spain is the fruit of strenuous efforts of Muslim imams over the past years,” chairman Sheikh Alaa Said told IslamOnline.net on Monday, October 26.

500 Years of Women in Western Art

500 Years of Women in Western Art

This is a very cool video submitted to YouTube by the creator, Philip Scott Johnson – (find him on YouTube as eggman913). Probably none of you who know me are surprised I wanted to know who all the paintings and artists were… :-). Thanks to my nephew Derek whose bright idea this was originally and to my sister Brenda and YouTubers: BonifacijJ, actofreason, 0midnightmuse0 and jerrypicker, for their assistance in identifying the art work and artists.

BBC NEWS | Europe | The secret history of the Nazi mascot

Alex Kurzem came to Australia in 1949 carrying just a small brown briefcase, but weighed down by some harrowing psychological and emotional baggage.

Tucked away in his briefcase were the secrets of his past – fragments of his life that he kept hidden for decades.

Black and white image of young Alex Kurzem in uniform, sitting on a soldier’s knee
Alex was forced to keep his Jewish identity hidden

In 1997, after raising a family in Melbourne with his Australian bride, he finally revealed himself. He told how, at the age of five, he had been adopted by the SS and became a Nazi mascot.

His personal history, one of the most remarkable stories to emerge from World War II, was published recently in a book entitled The Mascot.

“They gave me a uniform, a little gun and little pistol,” Alex told the BBC.

Global Voices Online » Egypt: Egyptian Male Blogger Orders Artificial Hymen

When Radio Netherlands broadcasted an Arabic translation of the Artificial Virginity Hymen kit, when Youm7 newspaper announced that the product will be available on the Egyptian market for LE 83, when conservative parliament members in Egypted wanted the product banned and any exporter exiled or beheaded, and when it caused such an uproar in the Egyptian blogosphere, Mohamed Al Rahhal just had to buy one.

Dutch
nrc.nl – Opinie – Het geheim van Geert Mak

En toen kwam 9/11, en daarna de moord op Fortuyn en vervolgens de moord op Theo van Gogh. De eerste moord werd gepleegd door een linkse milieu activist die zijn motieven nooit heeft willen openbaren. De tweede moord was een geloofsuiting van een Moslim radicaal. De aanleiding was de vertoning van de film ‘Submission’ die Van Gogh samen met Ayaan Hirsi Ali gemaakt had. Die film bevatte een onprettige boodschap: de Koran predikt geweld tegen vrouwen die zich niet onderwerpen aan hun man. In die film werd volgens de moordenaar Allah beledigd. Ook Geert Mak veroordeelde ‘Submission’ omdat hij gemaakt zou zijn volgens de methode Goebbels. Het pamflet waarin hij die uitspraak deed bevatte een onprettige boodschap: Mensen die kritiek uiten op de islam verzieken het politieke klimaat en hebben het terrorisme over ons uitgeroepen. Het is een argumentatie die in de VS wordt omschreven als ‘blaming the victim’. Het lijkt me dat Maks analyse eerder een onderdeel van het probleem is dan een oplossing. Die oplossing begint met het respecteren van de mening van alle burgers en die van de Wilders aanhangers niet reduceren tot frustaties die door consultants en interim managers veroorzaakt zouden zijn. Het is veeleer zo dat tot 2001 in de politieke arena geen partij toegelaten werd die de opvattingen van een substantiële minderheid vertegenwoordigde.

‘Geert Wilders ondermijnt democratie’ – Binnenland – de Volkskrant

De PVV van Geert Wilders is een extreem-rechtse partij die islamofobie en systeemhaat tegen de overheid mobiliseert. Daarmee ondermijnt zij de sociale cohesie en de democratie in het land. Dat stellen drie wetenschappers in een aan de Tweede Kamer beloofd onderzoek over radicalisering, dat in opdracht van het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken is uitgevoerd .

Het ministerie wil volgens bronnen dat deze conclusies worden afgezwakt wegens ‘politieke gevoeligheid’. De wetenschappers – radicaliseringsonderzoeker Hans Moors, hoogleraar (contra-)terrorisme Bob de Graaff en extreemrechtsdeskundige Jaap van Donselaar) houden echter voet bij stuk.

Een woordvoerder van Binnenlandse Zaken zegt dat ‘discussies over het rapport nog lopen’, maar dat er ‘pertinent geen sprake is van onenigheid’. Onderzoeker Moors wil weinig kwijt, maar beaamt wel dat onderdelen, zoals de kwalificatie extreem-rechts, ‘gevoelig liggen’. ‘De minister moet haar standpunt bepalen op grond van ons stuk. Zij kan zeggen: die Van Donselaar, De Graaff en Moors zijn zo gek als een deur. Maar ze mag niet aan ons onderzoek komen.’

Wilders ziedend door etiket ‘extreem-rechts’ – www.pvv.nl

Wilders verwerpt die kwalificaties. ”We zijn democratisch gekozen en gebruiken alleen democratische middelen”, stelde hij.

Demoniseren
”Dit is de zoveelste schandelijke en ziekelijke poging van de elite ons te demoniseren en de PVV en al onze kiezers proberen de mond te snoeren. Maar dat gaat ze nooit lukken!

Als er iets is dat de democratie ondermijnt, dan is het wel deze linkse elite, onder wie dit soort nep-onderzoekers, en de islamisering”, aldus Wilders.

Geweld
Hij vindt het verder kwalijk dat juist de ”onzinnige kwalificaties” van de wetenschappers mensen zou kunnen aanzetten om geweld tegen hem te gebruiken.

1 comment.

Closer Blogview: Nederlandse / Nederlandstalige blogs van moslims

Posted on October 30th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Het is nogal een klus om alle interessante weblogs van moslims bij te houden, zelfs al beperk je je tot alleen Nederlandse en Nederlandstalige blogs. Ik heb daarom een nieuwe pagina Blogview toegevoegd aan Closer met daarop een overzicht van de belangrijkste Nederlandstalige en/of Nederlandse blogs en de meest recente entries van die weblogs. Wanneer je het overzicht vergelijkt met het complete overzicht van links naar Nederlandse (moslim) blogs, dan zul je zien dat Blogview veel korter is. Een weblog moet namelijk wel dit jaar actief zijn geweest anders wordt het niet opgenomen.

De weblogs zijn verdeeld in de volgende categorieen:

Lifelog: Een persoonlijk weblog waarin het dagelijks leven van de weblogger (of een groep webloggers) besproken wordt. Dit kan politieke elementen bevatten, maar dat hoeft niet.
Dawah & Politics: Een weblog gericht op het activeren van mensen, hetzij om zich te verdiepen in de islam, hetzij om op te komen tegen onrecht dat men ziet of een combinatie ervan.
Politics and Media: Een weblog dat vooral reageert op het islam debat in Nederland in de politiek en media.
Dutch Social Science Blogs: De enige categorie waar niet persé moslims onder hoeven te vallen. Het gaat hier om weblogs van een onderzoeker of onderzoekers uit Nederland die zich (onder andere) bezighouden met islam en moslims in Europa.
Testimoniallog: Dit type weblog bevat vooral getuigenissen van de weblogger over de schoonheid, kracht en relevantie van de islam met uitleg over Koran, Soenna en hadith. Deze staan in principe los van het dagelijks leven van de weblogger en los van politieke ontwikkelingen, althans de eventuele relatie met het dagelijks leven en politiek is niet direct af te lezen van de inhoud.
Studentslog: Dit is categorie voor weblogs van studentenverenigingen.
Dutch Media: Weblogs verbonden met Nederlandse radio en/of televisie.

Natuurlijk zullen sommige weblogs in meerdere categorieen vallen. De indeling zal gaandeweg ook nog wel veranderen.

Op dit moment zijn er 18 23 24 28 (incl. 2 newsfeeds) weblogs opgenomen. De lijst met blogs zal de komende tijd uitgebreid worden en suggesties worden op prijs gesteld! Er kan niet gediscussieerd worden over de inhoud van de blogs: alle blogs van moslims kunnen worden opgenomen ongeacht de inhoud van de teksten.

Voor het complete overzicht en om suggesties te doen ga naar Blogview.

3 comments.

Closing the week 43

Posted on October 24th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Most popular on Closer this week

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Dutch in the news
IRR: Young Dutch Muslims find a venue

Young Dutch Muslims find a venue
By Chandra Frank

An interview with Umar Mirza, the 22-year-old chief editor of the Dutch website ‘We’re Here to Stay’.[1]

Chandra Frank: The results of a TV opinion poll, released shortly after the Islamophobic Freedom Party (PvV)[2] won record results in European parliamentary elections, indicated that a large proportion of Turkish and Moroccan migrants no longer felt welcome and would consider leaving the Netherlands. This makes the title of the website you edit, ‘We’re Here to Stay’ particularly pertinent. What’s behind the name?

Discussion » Are import brides a brake on integration?

Are import brides a brake on integration?

eng_bruidThe Dutch government is working on several measures to curb the influx of so-called import brides and grooms. Immigrants in the Netherlands marrying partners from their countries of origin, the government argues, put a brake on integration. Their partners are often poorly educated and regularly end up in a dependent and isolated position once in the Netherlands. 15,000 such marriages were counted in the Netherlands last year, up 30 percent from 2007.

“Because of their lack of knowledge of the Dutch language, their low level of education and unfamiliarity with the [Dutch] institutions there is a risk that these women will not be able to adequately raise their children to be proper citizens,” integration minister Eberhard van der Laan said in defence of the measures.

In an editorial on the issue NRC Handelsblad sided with experts who say every citizen’s right to a family life is determined by the European Convention on Human Rights. “Who we share our lives with or want to marry is an individual choice. The motives for doing so are by definition not a matter for the state. It is dangerous to try to stem immigration by imposing standards that belong to family law,” the editorial said.

What do you think? Are import brides indeed a brake on integration of ethnic minorities and should the practice be discouraged, in the Netherlands and elsewhere, or should everyone be allowed to marry who they want, even if they are related or underage under Dutch law?

nrc.nl – International – Muslims protest Wilders’ UK visit

Muslims protest Wilders’ UK visit

Reuters
Around 20 Muslim protesters hurled abuse at Dutch member of parliament Geert Wilders as he arrived for a meeting at the British parliament on Friday, forcing him to take refuge in a nearby building.

nrc.nl – International – Dutch to the core, and asked to prove it

Dutch to the core, and asked to prove it

Not everyone who is legally obligated to take the integration course actually needs it. NRC Handelsblad spoke to three perfectly integrated immigrants who are shocked at having their Dutchness put to the test.

nrc.nl – International – Features – Germany in uproar after politician says the ‘unspeakable’ about Turkish immigrants

Germany in uproar after politician says the ‘unspeakable’ about Turkish immigrants

Bluntness and bitterness have long been elements of integration debates in Europe. But emotion often obscures an important question: Why do many ethnic groups integrate well into society while others do not? A look at the German situation.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Feminism’s freedom fighter — latimes.com

Do you regard yourself as an atheist?

Did God create man, or did man create God? I belong to the group who say man created God. I am comfortable to live without an outer force telling me what to do. I’d rather believe in human beings.

Where do you put yourself politically?

My politics are what the Americans call libertarian and the Europeans call classic liberalist. [Here] the word “liberal” is hijacked by people who only care about collectivism. But then libertarian also implies you don’t care about communities. I am a radical individual freedom fighter or defender of individual freedom. I’m a universalist; I think these freedoms and rights are universal.

Gender
Middle East News | Somali hardliners whip women for wearing bras

Men whipped for shaving, women made to shake breasts
Somali hardliners whip women for wearing bras

Jailed for defending his sister

Somalia’s hardline Islamist group al-Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a deception, north Mogadishu residents said on Friday.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Veiled reasons

Although the number of women wearing the niqab in Egypt is unknown, it is certainly growing. You need simply to stroll along the street to see that. So when the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mohamed Sayed Tantawi complained that an 11-year-old girl was wearing the niqab inside a girls-only school during a visit to classes on 3 October — the first day of the new term — his action was guaranteed to provoke controversy.

Southern Masala: Veiled Ambivalence

I began to discover what it meant to me, personally, to be a Muslim, and what I wanted my relationship with God to be. I’m still discovering.

Meanwhile, I keep reading current events dealing with Muslims and Islam, I am reading Muslim blogs, main stream media reports, etc. There is so much focus on the veil, hijab and niqab, it’s like an unending drumbeat through the internet. Every cliched article on women in Islam has some title like “Going behind the Veil” or “Islam Unveiled.” It’s as if we, as women in Islam, are purely defined by our veils. Western politicians pontificate on relieving Muslim women from their oppression by banning the veil, saving us from a prison of polyester/cotton blend. Education, health care, birth control, protection from violence, equality in legal rights are all issues tacked on as an afterthought, as if, somehow, if we could just get women to de-veil, all these problems would be solved for them. Simultaneously, women who veil seen as more conservative, more religious, more pious, dare I say more fundamentalist, than those who don’t. Women who don’t veil are seen as irreligious, presumed to disapprove of those who do, or to follow a more “modern” version of Islam.

For Muslim women, veil is power and beauty

For Muslim women, veil is power and beauty

By Riad Saloojee, For The Calgary HeraldOctober 14, 2009

Nothing can carve out cultural divides quite like the issue of the Islamic head covering (hijab) or face veil (niqab). Both continue to be the subject of not only debate but legislation the world over. We are not immune. Few Canadians would be unfamiliar with Quebec and its history with scarf-wearing Canadian Muslim learners. The issue has exhibited a tenacious longevity but, alarmingly, it continues to be hotly contested in ways that rarely rise to a sphere of mature discourse so essential to the functioning of any healthy civic society.

A case in point is the recent discussions on the topic, fuelled by plans of the Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar University to forbid entry to women students who don the face veil. No sooner than the reported plans were revealed, did the Canadian Muslim Congress call on Canada to ban the face veil. The arguments raged from the face veil being a “symbol of Islamic extremism,” a “medieval practice,” the result of a patriarchal “male misogyny” and a “security risk.” The head scarf and the face veil, it was asserted, are “alien” to Islam, and the Islamic primary sources speak nothing of them.

“Honour Violence” – A Threat To Immigrant Women | News | YLE Uutiset | yle.fi

Immigrant women in Finland are increasingly the victims of violence perpetrated in the name of family honour. In Helsinki, twice as many immigrant women have sought protection this year from violence than in previous years.

Veiled German Women Outside the Box – IslamOnline.net – European Muslims

The European Muslims Editorial Desk conducted the following e-mail interview with Ms. Hülya Dogan, member of the Muslim and Christian Workers’ Association in the North of Bonn (MUCHRI) and representative of the Alliance for Peace and Fairness (BFF) in the City Council of Bonn.

Cultural Breast Cancer Awareness – IslamOnline.net – Art & Culture

Cultural Breast Cancer Awareness

Pink Hijab Day

To me, Muslim women wear their faith on their head.
Spreading a communal awareness to fight the breast cancer, a group of Muslim women came up with the idea of Pink Hijab Day (PHD). “Pink Hijab Day is intended to shatter stereotypes of Muslim women, as well as raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research. All over the world, Muslims participated by wearing pink hijabs, pink ribbons, and donating to breast cancer foundations,” this is mission of the campaign as stated on its official website.

Debates
CJO’s Avenger212 – War, Negation and Muslim Identity Revisited

In the meantime, Muslims, who insist on living in the shadow of the ‘West’ as unreserved aficionados or obsessed detractors must redefine their own discourses. As for the latter, they must not allow war alone, MTV consumer media culture, hegemonic globalization and racist remarks by a politician or a born again evangelical to taint their entire view of what are essentially unique, diverse and in many ways impressive civilizations that have done much good. Indeed, there is the like of Boykin, but there are millions of others who are peace-loving, ordinary people, some of whom are ardent advocates of human rights, anti-war campaigners, including the thousands who have repeatedly broken the siege on Gaza, and previous to that Iraq. Muslims too must quit caricaturing them, reducing them to enemies, juxtaposing Muslims’ essential righteousness with ‘Western’ essential depravity. Not only are such reductions inaccurate and self-defeating, they also break down possible alliances between the forces of good in this world, in a time when they are of essence.

Blissful Dunya: Anti-Islamic websites blah blah blah

You know if I wanted to get upset about it everytime I came across an anti-Islam site, an article that severely misrepresents Islam or a person out to discredit Muslims – I would be angry A LOT of the time. You really don’t have to look far to find ”bad” sites. Any google search often has at least one questionable site listed in the results.

Muslims and the West. Healing the Culture Gap! « Greek Muslimah Xenia and The Light of Islam!

There is an assumed cultural gap; and in the coming few lines, I will try to share some of the possible reasons for this wrong assumption, and the importance of bridge-building to overcome this gap of misunderstanding one another.

Misc.

Held by the Taliban – A Times Reporter’s Account. A Five-Part Series by David Rohde. – Series – NYTimes.com

THE car’s engine roared as the gunman punched the accelerator and we crossed into the open Afghan desert. I was seated in the back between two Afghan colleagues who were accompanying me on a reporting trip when armed men surrounded our car and took us hostage.

In Dutch

De schande van de kopvoddentaks – Trouw

Niemand mag de hoofddoek tot signaal maken dat de vrouwen die hem dragen minder waard zijn.

Met de hoofddoekbelasting zet Wilders wezenlijke verworvenheden van de Nederlandse natie op het spel.

0 comments.

Het gevaar van bidden in het openbaar

Posted on October 22nd, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere, Public Islam.

Religie, religieuze uitingen in het openbaar staan vaak garant voor de nodige discussies. Weblog Wij blijven hier had enige tijd een header op haar site met daarbij een foto van een moslim die op straat bidt. En met dat laatste was blijkbaar wat verkeerd, want de bloggers kregen klaarblijkelijk de nodige afkeurende mails daarover. De openbare ruimte moet neutraal zijn voor sommigen, wat dat verder ook mag betekenen. Een tijdje geleden ging een moslimprediker in Rotterdam op straat bidden; de moskee waar hij in wilde was namelijk overvol. Op het moment dat dat gebeurde vlogen de televisiecamera’s met cameramannen en fototoestellen met fotografen naar buiten om daar mooie plaatjes van te maken.

Maar zeg nou zelf…hoe vaak ziet u moslims buiten op straat bidden? Af en toe tijdens demonstraties zie je het wel eens zoals enige tijd terug ook met een demonstratie in Italië tegen de Israelische politiek en het militaire ingrijpen in Gaza. Dat viel niet in goede aarde en is dan inmiddels ook verboden. In Parijs gebeurt het ook en dan wel wekelijks op de Rue Myrha waar moslims al enkele jaren op vrijdagmiddag bidden omdat de moskee overvol is. Een interessante casus als het gaat om islamisering. Is het bouwen van een nieuwe moskee een teken van islamisering? Is het bidden op straat een teken van islamisering? Wat zegt biddende moslims op straat over het Parijse straatbeeld? En in Rome of Milaan (ja zo nauwkeurig is de berichtgeving op internet) baden moslims op straat bij het einde van het vasten hetgeen ook enige commotie met zich meebracht. En natuurlijk was daar het gebed van moslims aan de westfront van Capitol Hill. Maar hiermee hebben we de belangrijkste toch wel gehad volgens mij.

[flashvideo filename=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3knh5y0vPA /]

Een enkele keer heb je een individuele moslim die bidt op een openbare plek, zoals Nijmeegse student Izz ad-Din:
» Radboudstudent vast op verdenking terrorisme Voxlog: Website van het Nijmeegse universiteitsmagazine Vox

Toen Izz ad-Din tijdens de lunchpauze van de excursie op het Binnenhof een plek zocht om te bidden, ging het mis. ‘De trap voor de Ridderzaal, die op dat moment gesloten was, leek me wel een rustige plek. Maar een agent dacht daar kennelijk anders over. Die kwam naar me toe en wilde mijn papieren zien.’

Uit de identiteitscontrole bleek dat Ruhulessin nog een verkeersboete open had staan van 37,50 euro. Daarop moest hij mee naar het bureau. ‘Het was duidelijk dat het niet om die boete ging’, vertelt Ruhulessin. ‘Ik vroeg aan de agent welke bedreiging er uitgaat van iemand die bidt. Daarop zei hij heel cryptisch: “Ik was nooit goed in taal, maar wel in scheikunde. En ik weet dat nul plus nul soms een grote explosie is.”’

Ruhulessin betaalde de boete, maar bleef vastzitten in de cel. Na ongeveer een uur kreeg hij te horen waarom: hij werd officieel verdacht van ‘het voorbereiden van een terroristisch misdrijf’. De verdenking was gebaseerd op de ‘apparaten’ die hij bij zich had. ‘Ik dacht eerst dat het een grapje was, ik had alleen een laptop, een voicerecorder en een mobieltje bij me. Maar daarna werd ik bang. Ik dacht: ze zullen toch niet iets tussen mijn spullen hebben gedaan? Je ziet wel eens van die films.’

De student werd overgebracht van een ‘wachtcel’ naar een echte cel. Daar bleef hij nog eens een kleine twee uur vastzitten voordat hij weer naar de verhoorkamer werd gebracht. Toen was het snel voorbij. ‘De agent zei vastgesteld te hebben dat ik geen terrorist was. Wel moest ik nog op de foto, “zodat we volgende keer weten dat je geen terrorist bent”.

Het verhaal kan niet bevestigd worden door de politie aangezien die blijkbaar alle commentaar weigert. HP/De Tijd heeft daarom zelf maar eens een ‘diepgravend’ onderzoek gedaan naar de internetpraktijken van deze jongeman:De twee gezichten van binnenhofbidder Izz ad-Din Ruhulessin – HP/De Tijd

Maar is het blazoen van Ruhulessin, van Moluks/Nederlandse komaf en sinds drie jaar tot de islam bekeerd, echt zo schoon? Hij blijkt een actieve poster op allerlei internetfora. En daar is de redelijkheid en gematigdheid ver te zoeken. Zoals op Wij Blijven Hier: “Integratie is een daad van kufr (ongelovigheid, MT) broeder, dus weerhoudt je ervan inshallah. Integratie is namelijk zeggen dat de Nederlandse normen en waarden beter zijn dan die van Allah de Enige Legitieme Wetgever.” En wanneer iemand opmerkt dat er niets grappigs aan is als mensen die de islam bekritiseren worden gedood of bedreigd: “Moeten ze Islam maar niet ‘bekritiseren’. Eigen schuld dikke bult.”

Op dezelfde site schrijft Ruhulessin: “Ik begrijp het best (hoewel ik het geen preferabele methode vind) dat westerse NGO’ers (niet-gouvernementele organisaties, MT) gedood worden, aangezien de meeste westerse NGO’s hun werk gebruiken als front om westerse normen en waarden in onze landen op te dringen.” En dan zijn er ook nog epistels, waarin de student zijn weinig subtiele kijk (zie 5/4/2008) op de Nederlandse samenleving tentoonspreidt.

Is dat een eigen-schuld-dikke-bult redenering van HP/De Tijd of een oprechte belangstelling naar de persoon achter de ‘binnenhofbidder’. Nu zijn redelijkheid en gematigdheid inderdaad soms ver te zoeken in de postings van deze jongeman, maar dat is nog geen reden om hem op te pakken wegens bidden (?) of als verdachte in het voorbereiden van een terroristische aanslag; zelfs niet als het bidden gebeurt op het Binnenhof. Aan de andere kant was de opmerking over explosies ook niet zo doordacht (of juist wel). Ervan uitgaande dat de berichten helemaal kloppen, betekent het in ieder geval dat een moslim die in het openbaar bidt zo bijzonder is dat hij door de politie wordt opgemerkt.

Zo lijkt bidden in het openbaar gevaarlijk…maar voor wie?

0 comments.

Closing the week 42

Posted on October 18th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Most popular on Closer this week

If you want to stay updated and did not subscribe yet, you can do so HERE

Gender

Muslimsdebate

Kuwaiti female lawmaker wants to scrap a requirement that women must comply with Sharia

Kuwait lawmaker calls for amendment to election law to scrap Sharia rules
Rula Dashti, who does not wear the hijab, challenges the requirement that women must comply with Sharia rules to exercise their political rights. Women’s head covers stir up debate among Islamic scholars.

Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood – Telegraph

Barack Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood
President Barack Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.

German-Turkish Author Seyran Ates: ‘Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution’ – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

German-Turkish Author Seyran Ates
‘Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution’

In the run-up to the Frankfurt Book Fair, German-Turkish writer Seyran Ates discusses her new book, which describes the necessity of a sexual revolution in the Islamic world, the recent integration debate in Germany and the arrogance of German women’s rights activists.

Gaza Love Story: The Bride Who Crawled Through a Tunnel – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

He lived in the Gaza Strip, she in the West Bank. It seemed as though the Israeli blockade would prevent their marriage. Then May risked her life to crawl through a smugglers’ tunnel into Gaza and join Mohammed. Now they face an uncertain future together.

ProgressiveIslam.info:: ‘Secret’ Muslim lesbians find support on the web

‘Secret’ Muslim lesbians find support on the web
by: Salaam
Wed Oct 14, 2009 at 10:25:27 AM EDT

In researching another story about homophobia in Muslim communities, I came across this three-years-and-still-going thread about in-the-closet Muslim lesbians. It seems that a lot of “secret” Muslim lesbians are finding succor on this thread, so I thought I would pass it along. The descriptions of flourishing lesbian communities in some Muslim countries are also noteworthy.

Misc.

Young French rapper Diam’s converts to Islam : Euro-Islam: News and Analysis on Islam in Europe and the United States

Young French Rapper Diam’s (Mélanie Georgiades) has converted to Islam, explaining to the French Press, “Medicine was not able to heal my soul, so I turned toward religion.”

Government anti-terrorism strategy ‘spies’ on innocent | UK news | guardian.co.uk

• In the Midlands, funding for a mental health project to help Muslims was linked to information about individuals being passed to the authorities.

• In a college in northern England, a student who attended a meeting about Gaza was reported by one lecturer as a potential extremist. He was found not to be.

• A nine-year-old schoolboy in east London, who was referred to the authorities after allegedly showing signs of extremism – the youngest case known in Britain. He was “deprogrammed” according to a source with knowledge of the case.

• Within the last month, one new youth project in London alleged it was being pressured by the Metropolitan police to provide names and details of Muslim youngsters, as a condition of funding. None of the young Muslims have any known terrorist history.

• In one London borough, those working with youngsters were told to add information to databases they hold to highlight which youths were Muslim. They were also asked to provide information, to be shared with the police, about which streets and areas Muslim youngsters could be found on.

• In Birmingham the programme manager for Prevent is in fact a senior counter- terrorism police officer. Paul Marriott has been seconded to work in the equalities division of Britain’s biggest council.

• In Blackburn, at least 80 people were reported to the authorities for showing signs of extremism. They were referred to the Channel project, part of Prevent.

• A youth project manager alleges his refusal to provide intelligence led to the police spreading false rumours and trying to smear him and his organisation.

• One manager of a project in London said : “I think part of the point of the [Prevent] programme is to spy and intelligence gather. I won’t do that.” In another London borough wardens on council estates were told to inform on people not whom they suspected of crimes, but whom they suspected could be susceptible to radicalisation. One source, who has been involved in Whitehall discussions on counter-terrorism, said: “There is no doubt Prevent is in part about gathering intelligence on people’s thoughts and beliefs. No doubt.” He added that the authorities feared “they’d be lynched” if they admitted Prevent included spying.

Why not call them personal network sites? « media/anthropology

’ve often wondered why scholars studying Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc., call these platforms ’social network sites’ instead of personal network sites. After all, these are platforms built around individuals and their personal (or egocentric) networks rather than around ‘whole’ (or sociocentric) networks such as clans, universities, localities or firms. In social network analysis this distinction between personal and whole networks is crucial

Pickled Politics » Geert Wilders is back and causing trouble

In the video Geert Wilders says he has “nothing against Muslims”. But here is is earlier ten-point plan to save the West. It shows he does have a problem with Muslims.

1. Stop cultural relativism. We need an article in our constitutions that lays down that we have a Jewish-Christian and humanism culture.
2. Stop pretending that Islam is a religion. Islam is a totalitarian ideology. In other words, the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam.
3. Stop mass immigration by people from Muslim countries. We have to end Al-Hijra.
4. Encourage voluntary repatriation.
5. Expel criminal foreigners and criminals with dual nationality, after denationalization, and send them back to their Arab countries. Likewise, expel all those who incite to a ‘violent jihad’.
6. We need an European First Amendment to strengthen free speech.
7. Have every member of a non-Western minority sign a legally binding contract of assimilation.
8. We need a binding pledge of allegiance in all Western countries.
9. Stop the building of new mosques. As long as no churches or synagogues are allowed to be build in countries like Saudi-Arabia we will not allow one more new mosque in our western countries. Close all mosques where incitement to violence is taking place. Close all Islamic schools, for they are fascist institutions and young children should not be educated an ideology of hate and violence.
10. Get rid of the current weak leaders. We have the privilege of living in a democracy. Let’s use that privilege and exchange cowards for heroes. We need more Churchills and less Chamberlains.

Why didn’t he mention any of that today? Idiot.

Dutch

Multicultureel huwelijk goed voor de genenpool

De discussie rond neefnichthuwelijken wordt niet goed gevoerd, vindt Martina Cornel, hoogleraar Community Genetics. “Eigenlijk draait dat hele debat niet om een medische kwestie, maar om het maatschappelijke probleem van importbruiden. Zeg dan gewoon dat je daar tegen bent.”

De hele implicatie dat een kind uit zo’n relatie een enorme kans op een erfelijke afwijking heeft, vindt zij niet correct. Het gaat om een verhoogde kans van twee tot drie procent. Een vrouw boven de 35 jaar loopt, alles bij elkaar geteld, net zo’n hoog risico op het slecht aflopen van haar zwangerschap.

Stop criminaliteit Marokkaans-Nederlandse jeugd! – Opinie – de Volkskrant

Het is de hoogste tijd dat de Marokkaanse gemeenschap een actievere rol gaat spelen bij de preventie en bestrijding van deze criminaliteit onder Marokkaans-Nederlandse jongeren. De actiegroep ‘Stop criminaliteit Marokkaanse jongeren’ wil een platform zijn voor alle Nederlanders van Marokkaanse afkomst, die vinden dat de maat vol is en dat ook de Marokkaans-Nederlandse gemeenschap haar verantwoordelijkheid moet nemen.

De actiegroep stelt zich hierbij het volgende tot doel een netwerk op te richten van professionals en andere geïnteresseerden, waarbij alle Nederlanders van Marokkaanse komaf zich kunnen aansluiten met als doel de preventie en bestrijding van criminaliteit onder Marokkaans-Nederlandse jongeren.

Comite van aanbeveling;
Dr. Frank Bovenkerk,criminoloog
Drs.Nadia Bouras
Mohamed Sini, directeur ROC-Midden Nederland
Dr. Albert Benschop

De professionals die ondertekend hebben;

Werkzaam in welzijn,cultuur, politie,/justitie en onderwijs
Ibrahim Wijbenga
Fadma Bouchataoui , Rotterdam
Hassan Lamou, Den Haag
Ibtissam Asbaa, Eindhoven
Fatima Querrach, Den Bosch
Najoua el Yacoubi,Amsterdam
Nesrin Adlani,Amsterdam
Mustafa Aoutiq,Utrecht
Aziza Aarab,Den Haag
Karima Sahla,Den Haag
Hafid Azaoum,Eindhoven
Chahid el Haddouti,Gouda
Salima Essakati, Rotterdam
Khalid Chiki, Amsterdam
Ali Al Hadaui,Leiden
Fatima Zohra Hadjar, Amsterdam
Jamal Sbai, Eindhoven
Rajae el Mouhandiz, Amsterdam
Mamoun el Louikili, Utrecht
Chaaib el Maach, Helmond
Dounia El Baraka, Den Haag
Mousid Akhamrane, Amsterdam
Hassan Idrissi, Bergen op Zoom
Mounir Dadi,Amsterdam
Wafae Mansuri,Eindhoven
Rafia Aallouch,Amsterdam
Abdel Aziz Abousellam,Sassenheim
Nora Asrami, Zoetermeer
Gerard “Red”Wijngaarden, Eindhoven
Ahmed Kotati, Eindhoven
Layla Hacene, Rotterdam
Fatima Laghzaoui,Utrecht
Abida Chakay, Den Bosch
Mohamed Amessas,Gouda
Iliass el Hadioui, Rotterdam

Organisatie;
UMMON
VIN
SMN

0 comments.

Closing the week 41

Posted on October 10th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Most popular on Closer this week:

If you want to stay updated and did not subscribe yet, you can do so HERE

Anthropology
New films for teaching anthropology | Savage Minds

I wanted to highlight those films which I think are particularly well suited for the anthropology classroom. The following four films are all under one hour in length, and struck me as useful accompaniments for courses on their respective topics. I do this because, as a documentary filmmaker I know how important institutional purchases are – not just for making a living, but often just to break even on the costs of making a film. So please consider ordering these films for your school library!

Your virtual you « Anthromodernity

There is a debate in Swedish news media regarding diseased peoples facebook profiles, do we honour them by letting the profile remain as a virtual bversion of the deas person, or is it simply disrespectful? In the infomation age – death is no longer definite. I have previously ecountered virtual cities in the anthropological article by Khosravi and Graham (in Reordering Public and Private in Iranian Cyberspace, 2002) .The example in the article is a city destroyed by war is virtually existing online. This online virtual sphere is becoming more and more emergent to research,

Moderate in extremism: Malaysia, the rattan cane, and the Muslim model « Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist

Beyond cases such the yoga fatwa, or the increasing, sometimes organised and directed, expression of intolerance, as well as the case of Ms Shukarno, is a test to verify of how Malaysian society, and neighbouring countries, may react to a future Malaysia that may be moderate – yes, but in extremism.

Material World: Coming of Age in Digital Anthropology

Material culture theorists will find in Boellstorff and Dibbell a continuation of important debates about the nature of the material/immaterial and online/offline worlds. But what Malaby beings to the table is his specific study of Linden Labs and the way they conceptualized and realized the relationship between production and consumption in gaming. Linden Labs sought to cede more of the construction of the virtual world to users. Following from the ideals of liberation through technology they envisaged a kind of co-construction between the game and the gamer. Respecting contingency as central to gaming they tried to eschew hierarchy or control by constantly learning from the unexpected appropriations of consumers. At least that was the theory. How it works out in practice is excellently analyzed in the course of this book.

webnography » Blog Archive » it came of its own accord. accordingly, it came into its own.

And so i found the soul of Portugal, and found my calling also: a wandering empath nourished by adventure and diversity, open heart guided by intuition and empathy ever onward toward la musica au vivo, a cacophonous cadence of erratic heartbeats wound together and the spaces in-between. Full-fledged allegiance to the tribe and to the set path must be avoided at all costs in pursuit of the self-sensical, the poetical peregrination:

She spoke of the need to need nothing, and then nothing came to be: um amor blooming in poetic ecstasy. Obrigada, universe, for synchronicity.

The Danish People’s Party and mosques in Denmark « Cultural Meanings

Although there are major areas of overlap with parties that grew out of 20th century fascism, the DPP is not a fascist party. Its political theory is a perverse bastard child of enlightenment liberalism with some of the same roots as National Socialism, but like similar Dutch phenomena it should not be confused with fascism. This is perhaps what makes it even more disturbing to those who believe in pluralism. It is arguably the radically democratic and egalitarian nature of Danish political culture, which has provided the enabling conditions for the rise of a party like the DPP.

Brass Crescent Awards
The Sixth Annual Brass Crescent Awards – Honoring the Best of the Muslim Blogosphere

The Brass Crescent Awards, a joint project of altmuslim and City of Brass, is an annual awards ceremony that honors the best writers and thinkers of the emerging Muslim blogosphere (aka the Islamsphere). Nominations are taken from blog readers, who then vote for the winners.

What are the Brass Crescent Awards? They are named for the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights. Today, the Islamsphere is forging a new synthesis of Islam and modernity, and is the intellectual heir to the traditions of philosophy and learning that was once the hallmark of Islamic civilization – a heritage scarcely recognizable today in the Islamic world after a century’s ravages of colonialism, tyrants, and religious fundamentalism. We believe that Islam transcends history, and we are forging history anew for tomorrow’s Islam. These awards are a means to honor ourselves and celebrate our nascent community, and promote its growth.

Join the Hijab Caravan
Muslim women boxers to wear hijab at 2012 Olympics – Times Online

THE burqa boxers are coming. Young women are training in Afghanistan to fight in Islamic dress at the 2012 London Olympics.

Wearing hijabs beneath their headguards and clothes that cover their bodies, 25 female pugilists are preparing for their bouts in gruelling training sessions at Kabul’s Olympic stadium, once the scene of public executions by the Taliban.

Muslim group calls for burka ban in Canada – Holy Post

A Canadian Muslim group is calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the burka in public, saying the argument that the right to wear it is protected by the Charter’s guarantee of freedom of religion is false.

“The burka has absolutely no place in Canada,” said Farzana Hassan, of the Muslim Canadian Congress. “In Canada we recognize the equality of men and women. We want to recognize gender equality as an absolute. The burka marginalizes women.”

Now Italy considers banning the burqa too | Mail Online

Italy today became the latest European government to announce it was considering introducing a law which would make wearing a burqa illegal.

Muslim woman lifts veil to testify in Spanish court < Spanish news | Expatica Spain

Muslim woman lifts veil to testify in Spanish court
Fatima Hssisni told journalists that she was surprised by the controversy of wearing a burka to testify in court.

Madrid – A Muslim woman testified in court in Madrid Monday with her veil raised and her head turned away from the public, in a deal reached with the judge last week after she had refused to show her face.

Global Voices Online » Egypt: Niqab Ban Stirs Controversy

The Niqab (or face cover) is making the headlines again after the head of Al Azhar and Egypt’s Imam, Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi asked a young girl to uncover her face while he was inspecting an Azhar school in Cairo.

Issues, issues, issues
DutchNews.nl – Foreign brides face tougher immigration rules

Foreign brides face tougher immigration rules

Saturday 03 October 2009

The cabinet is to introduce tougher rules for marriage-related immigration, justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin and integration minister Eberhard van der Laan announced on Friday.

German publisher drops novel over fears of Muslim backlash : Religion General

A German publisher has cancelled plans to publish a mass-market novel out of fears that it might face violent protests due to a rude reference to the Koran, Der Spiegel magazine reported Saturday. The crime novel – about the “honour killing” of a Muslim woman – had been scheduled for September publication, but the Droste publishing company of Dusseldorf decided not to print it after all, the magazine said in a story to appear in its Monday issue.

East London Advertiser – Muslim councillor faces protests as she takes prayer break at Tower Hamlets

Cllr Rania Khan faced shouts of “disgusting” from the public gallery as she left to pray and on her return said she had been disturbed by the “abuse hurled at her”.

A former Labour councillor, Ronald Osborne, sitting in the gallery, said: “We weren’t hurling abuse at her. But you don’t stop a meeting to pray, that should be done beforehand.

In Dutch

Islamisering bestaat niet – HP/De Tijd

Onder islamisering wordt verstaan: de maatschappij organiseren volgens islamitische principes. Hiervan is in Nederland geen sprake. In ons land gelden de basiswaarden en grondprincipes van de democratische rechtstaat. Dit houdt in dat de overheid een neutrale positie inneemt ten opzichte van de inhoud en organisatie van religies, dus ook ten opzichte van de islam.

“Ik heb honger!”, of: studenten over de Iftar « Standplaats Wereld

Het eerste veldwerk voor een groep aanstormende antropologen, was het bezoeken van een heuse Iftar. Een wàt? Iftar is de maaltijd die gedurende de ramadan door moslims direct na zonsondergang genuttigd wordt. In Nederland wordt de Iftar door verschillende moskeeën en organisaties aangegrepen om moslims samen te brengen, maar ook om niet?moslims uit te nodigen deel te nemen aan deze gezamenlijke maaltijd. En wij waren er ook bij!

Allochtonenweblog: Vijf nieuwe moslimomroepen strijden om één plek

De Nederlandse Moslim Omroep (NMO) en de Nederlandse Islamitische Omroep (NIO) heffen zichzelf volgend jaar op. Vijf nieuwe omroepen, waaronder initiatieven van Radi Suudi en Mohammed Cheppih gaan strijden om de vrijgekomen zendtijd die slechts voor één moslimomroep beschikbaar zal zijn.

De NMO en NIO hebben geen nieuwe zendtijd aangevraagd voor de periode september 2010 tot december 2015, ook niet via hun overkoepelende stichting Verzorging Islamitische Zendtijd (SVIZ) die nu voor de twee omroepen de zendmachtiging beheert. Dat hebben de programmaleiders Abderrahman Farsi (NMO) en Mustafa Aarab (NIO) dinsdag verklaard.

Het Commissariaat voor de Media heeft voor de sluitingsdatum van 1 oktober vijf nieuwe aanvragen ontvangen van islamitische organisaties die in aanmerking willen komen voor de vrijkomende zendtijd. Slechts één daarvan wordt toegelaten. Het Commissariaat neemt voor 1 januari 2010 een besluit.

Frontaal Naakt. Ongesluierde opinies, interviews & achtergronden

Het mag dan best lollig zijn allemaal, maar tegelijkertijd is er meer aan de hand. Net zoals de streken van Marokkaanse raddraaiers ons tot vervelens toe door het netvlies worden gebrand, getuigt ook het HP-artikel van een stuitend soort paternalisme. Kijk, de aapjes kunnen ook wel eens wat: dansen, schrijven, grappig zijn – en ze worden er nog voor betaald ook!

Over hoofddoek & democratie « Rudi’s Blog

Voor of tegen een quasi volledig vrije sluierdracht op scholen, werk, in gezagsfuncties, …? De argumenten pro en contra werden uitgebreid onderzocht maar dan nog bleek het niet eenvoudig. Er bleken sterke en overtuigende argumenten pro én contra. Daarom werd het onderzoek uitgebreid en is ook het debat en het verband met integratie bekeken. Het debat bleek teleurstellend. Stel je voor, professoren, zelfs enkele juristen, die relevante uitspraken van het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens straal negeren! Dat is slechts één voorbeeld. Finale besluiten bleven buiten mijn bereik, maar in bijgevoegde opiniebijdrage kon ik wel wat suggesties meegeven. Dialoog, een veel ambitieuzer beleid tegen achterstelling van alle nieuwe Vlamingen én mogelijk ook selectieve verboden op hoofddoek lijken daarbij noodzakelijk.

KRO-Profiel – Persbericht

Mohammed Cheppih (32) strijdt voor een volwaardige positie van de moslims in Nederland. Zijn uitspraken in de pers en tijdens seminars van de door vader Cheppih opgerichte Al Waqf al-Islami Stichting in Eindhoven hebben bijgedragen aan zijn imago van radicale moslim. Er werden Kamervragen over hem gesteld. Dorothée Forma probeert Cheppihs denkbeelden te doorgronden.

In 2008 richt Cheppih in het Amsterdamse stadsdeel Slotervaart de Poldermoskee op. Hij preekt daar maandelijks, in het Nederlands. Forma gaat op vrijdag naar de moskee om zijn preek te horen. En ze keert met Cheppih terug naar Kosovo, waar hij in 1999, ten tijde van de etnische schoonmaak van Albanese moslims door orthodoxe Serviërs, werkte voor een Saoedische hulporganisatie. Het gewelddadige conflict en het leed van de vluchtelingen lieten op hem een onuitwisbare indruk achter. Na 11 september 2001 wordt de Saoedische hulporganisatie door de CIA gelinkt aan Al-Qaida en dientengevolge Cheppih ook.
The Wall Street Journal doet er in 2003 nog een schepje bovenop met een geruchtmakend artikel waarin vader en zoon Cheppih als radicaal worden bestempeld. De activiteiten van de Al Waqf al-Islami Stichting worden in verband gebracht met extremistische propaganda. Eindhoven zou een broedplaats zijn van jihadisten.
Cheppih wordt bedreigd, voelt zich onveilig en vlucht in 2005 naar de Emiraten. Daar komt hij tot de conclusie: “Nederland ís mijn land, ik ben meer Nederlander dan ik had gedacht. Ik dróóm in het Nederlands, ik hou van friet en van kaas, ik ben PSV-er in hart en nieren, ik laat me niet wegjagen!” Cheppih keert terug. “Nederland is nog niet van me af.”

Bruggenbouwers » Lancering digitale werkboek Hagar-Sarah

Wij (vrouwen en mannen van verschillende tradities) komen elkaar in Nederland overal tegen, in verschillende contexten: maatschappelijk, professioneel en sociaal. Soms begrijpen we elkaar niet. Dan zijn we geneigd verkeerd te interpreteren. Dat kan onnodige conflicten oproepen, schadelijk zijn, maar is in ieder geval vaak pijnlijk.

Dit digitale werkboek van de adviesgroep Hagar-Sarah biedt een methodische en informatieve handreiking bij ontmoetingen en gesprekken tussen joden, christenen en moslims, vanuit de ervaringen van vrouwen uit deze drie tradities.

Polderislam.. » Het gebed

Is er inderdaad een ontwikkeling gaande binnen de moslims en wordt het gebed minder gepraktiseerd dan de eerste generatie moslims? Of is er juist meer aandacht voor het gebed dankzij de bouw van meer koranscholen en moskeeën in Nederland? En..Kun je jezelf moslim noemen als je het gebed niet serieus neemt?

Het islamdebat van Sadik Zemni | TurksNieuws.NL

We lijken wel bezeten van het idee dat de islam het grootste probleem vormt voor onze contreien. En steeds opnieuw wordt islamologen, arabisten en andere kenners gevraagd: wat zegt de islam over dit of dat onderwerp? De islam zegt, helaas, niks. En dus begint de kakofonie.

Dit boek wil het zogenaamde ‘islamdebat’ verduidelijken en nuanceren. Want onze obsessie voor de islam weerspiegelt onze groeiende onkunde om het samenleven in een globaliserende wereld op een ordentelijke manier te organiseren. Het islamdebat analyseert de relatie tussen islam en Verlichting en het gevaar van de islamofobie. Het biedt een solide basis om na te denken over een vernieuwde politieke gemeenschap die insluit in plaats van uitsluit. Anders gezegd: dit is een oproep om via dialoog een plaats te vinden voor de islam in onze democratische maatschappij.

Volbloed Hollander laat van zich horen – Sargasso

Geert Wilders’ website watkostdemassaimmigratie.nl is online. Niet meer dan een mailadres en een forum. Dan is ons initiatief zelfs nog ambitieuzer. Na de boodschap van Geert Wilders vanochtend in Goedemorgen Nederland , waarmee hij duidelijk wilde maken dat hij een onderzoekscommissie van ‘de universiteit’ gaat vragen om hem te helpen, ben ik nieuwsgierig geworden welke universiteit hem gaat helpen – en waarmee eigenlijk? Gelukkig krijgt Wilders hulp vanuit het hele land van al die volbloed Hollanders, die op het forum van de site watkostdemassaimmigratie.nl vast de eerste reacties hebben gepost.

SGP: Islam en christendom ongelijk behandelen – Politiek – Reformatorisch Dagblad

SGP: Islam en christendom ongelijk behandelen
01-10-2009 11:48 | Redactie politiek

DEN HAAG – „Nederland is geen land waar we islam en christendom op één lijn moeten stellen”, betoogde SGP-Kamerlid Van der Staaij woensdag tijdens een debat over religie in het publieke domein.

„Dat ”religie en publiek domein” een explosief onderwerp is, blijkt wel uit het dossier waarin de brief van de minister terecht is gekomen”, merkte SGP-Kamerlid Van der Staaij aan het begin van het debat fijntjes op: „29754, terrorismebestrijding.” Hij had de lachers op zijn hand. Maar het was vooral Van der Staaij zelf die het vuurtje wist op te poken.

De Tweede Kamer debatteerde woensdag met de ministers Ter Horst (Binnenlandse Zaken) en Van der Laan (Integratie) over de nota ”Religie en publiek domein”, een handreiking voor gemeentebestuurders voor een ontspannen omgang met religieuze organisaties. Van der Staaij prikkelde zijn collega-Kamerleden met de stelling dat godsdiensten ongelijk zijn en ongelijk behandeld kunnen worden.

Weinig multi-culti in de rechtszaal – Trouw

’Het is de witte aanpak, de witte bril. Maar er is geen witte samenleving meer’
Rechters en advocaten weten vaak niet wat ze met culturele verschillen aanmoeten. Terwijl die in een multiculturele maatschappij toch vaak meespelen.

Door gebrekkige kennis over cultuurverschillen worden foute beslissingen genomen in rechtspraak en hulpverlening. „Van een crime passionnel maken ze eerwraak. En andersom.”

Stop met die dialoog, het is zo zinloos – DePers.nl

Knetter wordt hij, als hij meteen voor ongelovige wordt uitgemaakt wanneer hij probeert de islam een beetje te relativeren. En van linkse politici verwacht mensenrechtenactivist Farish Noor ook al weinig hulp, want die zijn te druk bezig om reli-praatjes uit te wisselen met raaskallende maniakken.

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Closing the week 40

Posted on October 3rd, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Anthropology
‘ilm al-insaan ??? ???????: Doha and the Hyperreal

Yesterday afternoon my friends and I dressed as Qataris* and went to the Souq Waqif, aka the “old” souk, which is really a new souk that the king had built when he became wistful for the souks of his childhood that had been bulldozed to make way for, well, petro-progress. In any case, it’s no Khan Al-Khalili but it was still a thing to do. And they certainly manage to pull together enough wizened old men sitting around drinking tea to make it look realistic (although I suspect they may have been animatronic), and the buildings are rustically elegant and carefully aged. I suppose it all depends on your definition of authenticity, but here a little Baudrillard might help, with Souq Waqif in place of Disneyland and Doha replacing Los Angeles

The (national) culture of cultural heritage « Culture Matters

Rothstein reviews Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage by James Cuno. He notes the key argument that while the idea of “cultural property” was introduced in order to protect, retain and make available certain objects, sites, buildings etc as the “cultural heritage of all mankind”, it has instead come to be used in an increasingly parochial sense, to restrict access to and control over objects of cultural significance.

Of particular interest to me was the argument that modern states are increasingly defining themselves as the rightful owners of “cultural property”, even when these claims involve an anachronistic projection of the contemporary state into the past.

France asks anthropologist to testify on burqa debate | Student Life

There are different styles of what the French government collectively refers to as “burqas,” Bowen said. While the burqa covers the entire face including the eyes, Bowen added, the niqab leaves the eyes exposed. The potential ban would prohibit both the burqa and the niqab, although the French government refers to both styles as “burqas.”
[…]

Bowen said that none of the French Muslim women who have been interviewed on the matter have indicated that they wear burqas because they feel forced to do so, although he recognized the possibility that those women exist and simply have not provided interviews.

Most women who have been interviewed “said that they decided to put it on as part of an effort to discover what true Islam is,” Bowen said. “Some said they might wear it for a while and then decide whether to continue or to stop wearing it, but nobody reports they were forced to do it.”

Having the choice to wear a burqa ensures “that women have the freedom to explore their religiosity without being forced to do one thing or the other,” Bowen added.

“Some of them say, ‘I want to wear it. I feel better. I feel protected. I don’t feel like a target,’” Ifri said.

Sophomore Kelly Diabagate, who practices Islam, said that wearing the burqa “is a matter of modesty.” She added that in her experience, most women wear the burqa because of a personal choice, seeing it as a means of “expressing liberty and personal rights.”

Bowen said that only a few hundred women in France wear burqas. A ban, though, could potentially have a profound impact on some of those women.

If women who wear burqas are no longer allowed to wear them in public, “they may disappear from public view. It may be worse for them. They won’t go out anymore. That’s the danger,” Ifri said. “That’s one of the reasons why it may not pass.”

Muslim women in the West
altmuslimah.com – CLOTHING: One woman’s journey toward pleasing Allah

One woman’s journey toward pleasing Allah
Posted by Mariam Khan on September 25, 2009

According to Phyllis Chesler, author of “Death of Feminism,” women dressed in a burqa “cease to exist. They are literally ghosts,” she writes on her blog. But as a 27-year old Muslimah living in America, wearing the abaya for eight years has never made me feel invisible. In the debate over muslim womens dress and status in the world, stereotypes and rhetoric are once again overshadowing the realities. My abaya has never been the cause for random searches at the airport, nor set off any security alarms at the nearby Wal-Mart.

The niqab, fact v fiction -Times Online

The niqab, fact v fiction
How much do you really know about the niqab? An insider guide to common misconceptions
Fatima Barkatulla

Spanish judge expels witness for wearing burka < Spanish news | Expatica Spain

Spanish judge expels witness for wearing burka
A Muslim woman refusing to show her face when testifying was asked to leave the courtroom.

Sveriges Radio International – English — Engelska

Björklund Against Burka Ban

Education Minister Jan Björklund says he doesn’t want to legislate against the use of headscarves, niqab, and burkas in Swedish schools.

Islam in Europe: Headscarf/Muslim Veil roundup

Headscarf/Muslim Veil roundup

Headscarf/Muslim Veil roundup

In the Netherlands, Belgium and France, there are various discussions about acting against the Muslim headscarf or burqa.

Muslim girls and women with problems in Austria | Austria News

Muslim girls and women with problems in Austria

Austrias Broadcasting Corporation reports that girls and women with a religious preference to the Islam have massive problems in Austria. Few days ago a muslim schoolgirl was attacked by two schoolmates, which tried to set her on fire with a lighter.

Virginity tests worry social workers

Virginity tests worry social workers

Medical association calls on doctors to stop performing tests to prove virginity of young women

Concerns that an increasing number of young Muslim women are being sent to doctors to prove that they are virgins has social workers and doctors taking steps to help them, reports DR News.

Dutch
D66: religie hoort wel (christendom) en niet (islam) in de privésfeer thuis | De Dagelijkse Standaard

Toen de subsidieaanvraag van Youth for Christ (YfC) voor het project Diverse City (DC) werd goedgekeurd door Minister Rouvoet was D’66 zeldzaam principieel: D66 [is] van mening dat religie niet thuis hoort in de publieke sfeer, maar dat het iets is wat in de privé-sfeer moet blijven.

Uit het inmiddels bekende interview van D66-voorzitter Ingrid van Engelshoven blijkt dat dit niet zozeer een principiële keuze van D66 was, maar veel meer een gelegenheidsargument. Wanneer het namelijk niet christelijke, maar islamitische claims op de openbare ruimte betreft dan is D66 van mening dat hier geen ideologische kwestie van gemaakt moet worden en dat we het vooral praktisch moeten bekijken.

’Tv toont liefst moslim die geen hand geeft’ – Trouw

’Tv toont liefst moslim die geen hand geeft’

Religie heeft geen vaste plek in de samenleving meer. Daarom moet er over worden bericht door journalisten met verstand van zaken, meent lector Van der Stoep. Die kennis zou vaak ontbreken.

PAROOL: POLITIEK – Marcouch opent suikerfeest in homocafé

Moslimhomo’s vierden vrijdagavond op hun eigen manier het einde van de ramadan. Stadsdeelvoorzitter Ahmed Marcouch uit Slotervaart opende het Suikerfeest in Club Havana in de Reguliersdwarsstraat.

Kenia

Jihad for love
Vorig jaar kwam de gedurfde en integer gemaakte documentaire ‘Jihad for Love’ uit. Een film over diepgelovige moslims en moslima’s uit verschillende delen van de wereld die worstelen met de combinatie van hun geloof en hun seksuele identiteit. (Trailer)Het is de eerste lange documentaire over dit controversiële onderwerp. De titel refereert niet aan een gewapende heilige oorlog, maar aan een interne religieuze strijd en het streven om het pad van God te volgen.
Zes jaar lang trok de maker Sharma, zelf homoseksueel en moslim, over de wereld om verhalen van andere homoseksuele moslims en moslima’s op te tekenen. Het relaas van de openlijk homoseksuele imam Hendricks uit Zuid-Afrika en de ervaringen van Mazen die twee jaar vastzat in Egypte.

Weblog Anja Meulenbelt » Achtergelaten kinderen

Anja Meulenbelt

Hoe groot het probleem is weten we eigenlijk nog niet: migrantenkinderen die – soms met hun moeder – achtergelaten worden in een van de landen waar hun ouders eens vandaan kwamen. Soms gaat het om kinderen van remigranten, die met hun ouders die besloten hebben om terug te gaan in Marokko, Turkije of een van de andere landen die opeens moeten aarden in een land waar ze alleen door vakanties een band mee hebben. Hebben ze zich in Nederland misschien Marokkaans gevoeld, in Marokko (of in een van de andere landen waar we het over hebben) blijken ze opeens door en door Nederlands.

Op de VU werd een expertmeeting gehouden, door de afdeling Sociale en Culturele Antropologie (Edien Bartels) samen met de SSR (Stichting Steun Remigranten) en de Landelijke Werkgroep Mudawwanah.

[…]
De problematiek is complex en in elk geval weer verschillend. Het kan gaan om kinderen die met hun moeder worden gedumpt, omdat de vader van ze af wil. Eenmaal terug in Marokko, vaak zonder papieren, vader die terug is naar Nederland en beloofd heeft ze weer op te komen halen of misschien ook niet, zitten die kinderen daar. Vaak zijn ze in Nederland geboren, spreken beter Nederlands dan de taal van hun ouders, zijn gewend aan een andere cultuur, aan andere vrijheden, computerkinderen die opeens terecht komen in een dorp waar ze nog water moeten halen bij de pomp. Veel kinderen lukt het niet om contact te maken met de kinderen daar, ze willen terug naar Nederland. En als hun moeder niet terug gaat met ze, en hun vader hen niet komt halen, moeten ze wachten tot ze achttien zijn en zelf terug kunnen. Maar ondertussen hebben ze Nederland, waar ze jaren niet zijn geweest, vaak geïdealiseerd, en merken pas als ze terug zijn dat niemand op ze zit te wachten. En soms zijn er nog andere problemen: worden meisjes uitgehuwelijkt, moet de moeder met de kinderen terug naar haar eigen familie zonder geld, en wordt afhankelijk van de welwillendheid van haar familieleden die misschien niet zitten te wachten op meer monden om te voeden.
[…]
In de zaal behalve veel deskundigheid ook nog een actiegroep die een spandoek ontvouwde en een bewogen speech hield. Mij werd niet helemaal duidelijk wat precies de reden was om nu juist hier, tussen al die mensen die hun best deden om wat aan de problemen te doen, een aanklacht te deponeren. Ik sprak nog met een van de jonge vrouwen, die zei niet tevreden te zijn – te veel onderzoek maar geen daden. Wat de oplossing dan was? De politiek moet daden stellen.

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Closing the week 39

Posted on September 28th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Hijab issues
Hijab permitted at world championship after law change – The National Newspaper

Hijab permitted at world championship after law change

Zoë Griffiths

The head of the UAE taekwondo team has praised the sport’s governing body after it allowed Mulsim women to wear the hijab at the forthcoming world championship.

The Permission to Narrate « Nuseiba

What interested me was the assumption of these women to debate the issue of the hijab (whatever forms of it) and the experiences of Muslim women without involving a practicing Muslim woman who observes the hijab or at least be a part of the community and faith that practices it, and thus be more qualified on the subject.

altmuslim – Clothing bans: Burqini blues

Those who wish ban the Burqini, as is happening in Europe, should simply say, “We don’t like Muslims swimming in our pools.” Any other justification, such as hygiene or “disturbing small children” simply doesn’t hold water.

Islam in Europe: Belgium: Headscarf update

The Forum, which unites more than 30 Flemish organizations, was set up after the headscarf ban. The organizations include Leidraad, vzw Vrije Keuze, AEL and imam Nordine Taouil. The Forum says they advocate active pluralism in society and oppose the headscarf ban for students.

The Forum says they’ve received dozens of complaints from girls in various provinces.

Islam in Europe: Spain: Judge refuses to hear testimony from burqa wearer

Judge refuses to hear testimony from burqa wearer

In a similar case in Denmark the judges focused on being able to identify the witness, but did not say anything about being able to judge the veracity of the witness’ testimony.

Sveriges Radio International – English — Engelska

Education Minister Jan Björklund says he doesn’t want to legislate against the use of headscarves, niqab, and burkas in Swedish schools.

Teachers unions have called for common rules for teachers and teaching students working in the Swedish education system, as it is currently up to each school to decide, which can sometimes cause conflict with students and teachers.

In a recent case a niqab-wearing teaching student was told that she couldn’t wear the face-covering head scarf by a school she was going to work in.

Anthropology
New bibliography: Media in Everyday Life « media/anthropology

This is the list of course readings and other resources that I’ve put together for my new module at Sheffield Hallam University entitled “Media in Everyday Life”. As always, further suggestions are very welcome.

Your virtual you « Anthromodernity

There is a debate in Swedish news media regarding diseased peoples facebook profiles, do we honour them by letting the profile remain as a virtual bversion of the deas person, or is it simply disrespectful? In the infomation age – death is no longer definite.

anthropologyworks » American Anthropologist launches “Public Anthropology Reviews”

Public Anthropology Reviews will highlight anthropological work principally aimed at non-academic audiences, including websites, blogs, white papers, journalistic articles, briefing reports, online videos, and multimedia presentations. The editors will also consider other traditional and innovative mechanisms for communicating anthropological research and concepts outside of academic realms and welcome suggestions. Please note that this review section will complement existing review sections and will therefore not review books, films or museum exhibits.

The Prism

Last week marked eight years since September 11, 2001. The internet is a medium that lends itself to all sorts of ideas and projects, and the collective memorization of 9/11 is one of them. Last Friday I was sifting through different sites, paying attention to the vast stories, reflections, and memories that people have of that day. Here are just a few examples of how this event has been remembered, carried on, reflected upon, and disseminated:

Misc.
Al-Qaida and the German Elections — jihadica

I think al-Qaida would not issue all these messages if something really big was in the making in the next few days, precisely because media offensives put intelligence services on high alert.

My guess is that these messages are primarily intended to influence German public opinion at a crucial juncture in the Western campaign in Afghanistan. Germany is a pivotal player in the coalition; her withdrawal could initiate a vicious (or virtuous, depending on one’s preferences) circle of European withdrawals from the Afghanistan enterprise. Al Qaida is focusing the weakest link in the coalition, just as the Madrid bombers were advised to do.

Dutch

Haagse As–Soennah moskee matigt toon – Regio – Reformatorisch Dagblad

De boodschap van de radicale as–Soennah moskee in Den Haag is onder invloed van het nieuwe bestuur gematigder van toon. Ook neemt de moskee sindsdien afstand van het aanwenden van geweld. Dat schrijft burgemeester Van Aartsen maandag op vragen van de VVD en SP. Volgens Van Aartsen komt de AIVD tot eenzelfde conclusie.

„Wij stellen vast dat de toon en de inhoud van de preken in de afgelopen periode is aangepast en dat de woordvoerders en imam van de moskee zich in het openbaar gematigder uitlaten”, zo laat Van Aartsen de gemeenteraad weten.

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Riotous Rotterdam – Ethnography in the Netherlands

Posted on September 21st, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Blogosphere, Multiculti Issues.

I don’t think there that many people from abroad who are doing ethnographic research in the Netherlands. Which is a pity. The country is small, travelling is easy and Dutch may seem a difficult language but many people also speak (some kind of) English. In particular with regard to integration, islam, radicalization, migrants, multiculturalism and so on, a lot is happening here and many of the transnational debates about these issues have a particular local flavor.

One of the exceptions doing research here is Ms. Long from Canada. Her Ph.D project on constructing national identity through space in the Netherlands aims at understanding the relationship between Dutch Muslims and Dutch natives by looking at how people interpret their belonging (and not belong) in relation to specific places and how this is influenced by national and Islamophobic sentiments.

Besides this very interesting topic she also holds a weblog: Riotous Rotterdam where she blogs about her experiences as a researcher, PhD student, migrant and so on. The next entry is exemplary in the sense that it not only combines all those aspects and also makes clear what good ethnographic research is about:

Riotous Rotterdam: Lost in Transit

I followed all the steps to buy a ticket at the machine (the station is under construction so there is no ticketbooth with an actual person) yet when I went to pay, none of my cards would work! Debit yes, but only for a Dutch bank, Chipcard yes (of which I own one) but it didn’t have the 24 Euros on it that I needed to get to Amsterdam Centraal. After fidgeting and becoming exasperated I noticed that a line had accumulated behind me and I tried to cancel out of my purchase so others could go ahead of me. Just when I thought all is lost, the man behind me asked if he could help. He ended up purchasing my ticket on his card to which I gave him money – Thank goodness. As it turns out this man was an audio technician who has travelled all over the world creating speaking podiums, concert halls, and the like. He had spent much time in Iran and had an opinion on the state of affairs in Rotterdam with regard to how Muslims living here choose their identity. He believed that religious identity had become a cultural identity for some, and that the distinction between these identities was lost to both those adopting the label ‘Muslim’ and those native Dutch who conflated the religious and cultural identities of individuals. Heavy talk for 10 in the morning but it works for me!

This man also informed me that my ticket to Amsterdam Centraal would not take me to the station that I was trying to go to, Amsterdam-Sloterdijk. The conductor on the train also surmised that I would have to get out and buy the extra ticket at the Central train station that would take me the one train stop further or I could take my chances with the next conductor who would switch over at the Centraal station. ‘It’s okay’, he said, ‘you have 5 minutes between when we arrive and when we leave again, so you can run to get your ticket’. Great.

So our train arrives and I’m waiting by the doors. I run downstairs to the ticket machines and search on the screen for Sloterdijk…Sloterdijk…Sloterdijk…but it’s nowhere. Arg! So I queue up with other passengers to ask at the information desk. The line-up took a while and when I finally told her my issue, she gave me a mothering look, “well that’s because you’re looking for Amsterdam-Sloterdijk, darling” Ah, yes, I should have known. So back to the machine, I go through all the steps (which station, first or second class, single or return, full price or discount) when I realise…this machine ALSO doesn’t take any of my cards and while it was only 2,20 Euros to the next stop…I was 30 cents short! So I walked into the nearest shop to purchase a small drink to get change meanwhile giving up on the idea that I would make the same train but that I would catch the next one. Wait in line, purchase a water, walk back to the ticket machine, purchase the ticket, walk slowly to the train listing on the wall when I realise…I still had one minute to make the train! So I’m running back through the station up platform 8a run up the flight of stairs just in time…to see the doors close and the train pull away.

I should also add that throughout the rest of the day I proceeded to lock myself out of my mobile (the mobile I have here has a pin code that I must be entered when it’s turned back on which I forgot in the safety of my room in Rotterdam), mix-up where I was suppose to check out of the metro thus docking my Chipcard to the point where I couldn’t afford another route (so I got off and tried to walk, got lost and fed up, got back on the tram and paid for another ticket) and then had to pay for both internet time and a pay phone card in order to meet with my colleague who is doing research in Amsterdam. Phew. If it feels like a wild ride just reading the blog I was very very very tired yesterday when I finally stepped back into the flat. Although I was lost in/through/around transit at points during my day, I did make some wonderful contacts and learn quite a lot. I look forward to the next time I visit Amsterdam…but maybe next time I’ll take a smoother ride.

Ok, forget what I wrote about ‘easy travelling’ but it is exactly these kind of experiences that makes ethnography difficult, exhausting and so rewarding.

Ms. Long also has a colleague who does ethnographic research in Poland and yes she is also blogging about it.
Notorious Nowa Huta

Using Nowa Huta as a case study, my research looks at the changes that have taken place in Poland over the past twenty years, the ways in which people of different generations remember the socialist past, and what their memories can tell us about people’s lives in contemporary Poland.

Both researches and blogs are very interesting to monitor which I certainly will do for the time to come. And if there are other researchers from abroad working in the Netherlands I would love to hear it!

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Closing the week 37

Posted on September 13th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Ramadan

altmuslimah.com – Family: Ramadan: A wife’s perspective (and a husband’s)

By Zehra Rizavi and Yusif Akhund, September 11, 2009
When my husband finally makes his way down the stairs, my frustration abates and he and I sit across from each other and share our early morning meal. We speak intermittently and keep one eye trained on the clock to ensure we finish our food by the time dawn prayers begin. Despite the sparse conversation and the hurried meal, I enjoy the feeling that we are both beginning our obligatory fasts together, as a unit.

Ramadan 2009 – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Ramadan 2009
In Muslim nations and regions around the globe, this is the first week of the holy month of Ramadan, a time for followers to abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sexual activity during the day, breaking their fast each sunset, with traditional meals and sweets. During this time, Muslims are also encouraged to read the entire Quran, to give freely to those in need, and strengthen their ties to God through prayer. The goal of the fast is to teach humility, patience and sacrifice, and to ask forgiveness, practice self-restraint, and pray for guidance in the future. This year, Ramadan will continue until Saturday, September 19th

Anthropology
Sexual mutilation and ethnocentrism – Open Anthropology Cooperative

I have a question which concerns a quite recent controversy about ethnocentrism, that has been raised by the the French ethno-psychiatrist Tobie Nathan. In fact, I am looking for the writings in which he says that we cannot condemn (morally and politically) practices of sexual mutilation in certain countries of the South, because this kind of assessment would be a new and hidden form of ethnocentrism. I know that his position has been criticized by other French anthropologists, but I don’t know who and where. That’s why I would like to find these texts too, at least the most significant ones, and have a global view on this debate.

Language Log » Whatever

In fact, whatever has come to be seen as a mark of disaffected young people all over the U.S., conveying apathy, dismissiveness, and a variety of related attitudes (lack of commitment, refusal to make discriminations, and so on) that draw scorn from all sorts of sources. Predictably, some of these sources grossly exaggerate the prevalence of whatever, as in this Urban Dictionary entry from 2003:
[…]

Language Log has looked at whatever as a symptom of what’s wrong with young people — “whateverist nomads” — these days: first in a critique by Geoff Pullum of Naomi Baron’s alarmist outcries about the dire effects of cellphones, texting, and the like; then in light-hearted follow-ups by Roger Shuy (it’s not electronic media that are at fault, but crossword puzzles) and Mark Liberman (in the comics: is youth slang the death of us?).

Visual Anthropology of Japan: Blog writers beware!

An academic blogger critiquing a government funded study, albeit done by his rival it seems, is being sued! Beware of Japanese libel laws! Can academic critique be grounds for a libel case in Japan? Even if the defendant is found innocent, as he most likely will be, the idea that this case actually is going to court and the costs involved are ridiculous.

anthropologyworks » Are teens subconscious online racists?

it seems to me that a person’s race, ethnicity and class surely shape her or his practical, technical, and aesthetic preferences. How could it be otherwise?

Boyd challenges us to recognize that our everyday practices on the internet – from the way we type to the layouts we prefer, even our sense of humor and aesthetic taste – separate us along racial and social lines from people we have never known, seen, or interacted with.

For me, the bottom line is: Are social networking choices political? Ethnographic methods, which can get beyond the surface of what people say about what they do and why they do it, often reveal patterns that may be subconscious. Ethnographic data can be a rude awakening, but it can reveal to us the unintended effects of our choices.

Anthropology 2.0 « Anthromodernity

I created a Facebook profile. I concluded my research days logging in to the Facebook chat where I always found someone of my informants. The social network profile became a tool of great utility for me, facilitating me in keeping contact with informants on a regular basis. Time of the day when we did not find actual time to meet me in real life we could spend time online chatting on Facebook. I thought about call these meetings to have taken place in virtual time, since the take place virtually not phisically, but I see the philosophical contradiction in time being virtual since time is actual…

The increasing feminization of anthropology

Have you been in an anthropology class / course with more men then women? I haven’t. In both Norway, Germany and Switzerland (pluss many other places incl South Africa, I heard), the gender balance between men and women is around 25-75. Eli Thorkelson, graduate student in cultural anthropology in Chicago, gives us some statistics from American universities that present a similar picture. But as she shows, it hasn’t always been like this. And according to her, we witness both an increasing feminization of anthropology and an ongoing masculine bias.

Middle East

What does the political science literature on civil wars really say about Iraq? | Marc Lynch

The most interesting panel which I attended at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Toronto was on the state of the field of the study of civil wars and genocide. A diverse group of top scholars in the field — Scott Straus, Ben Valentino, Elizabeth Wood, Barbara Walter, and Stathis Kalyvas — offered an overview of the evolution of the field which demonstrates how much rich, useful knowledge has been produced over the last decade. But what most caught my attention — and led me to join the discussion from the floor — was a discussion of the applicability of the literature to Iraq sparked by Barbara Walter’s presentation.

9/11
Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child – Motherlode Blog – NYTimes.com

Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child
By Lisa Belkin

This day will always bring more questions than answers. How to explain to your child what happened on a crystalline morning eight years ago? And if your child is Muslim, those questions have added layers, and more complicated answers. In a guest blog today, Moina Noor (a freelance journalist who blogs about public education at NorwalkNet.com) describes trying to make sense of it for her young son, while still trying to understand it all herself.

Europe
Belgium – Parliamentarians with Headscarves : Euro-Islam: News and Analysis on Islam in Europe and the United States

26-year-old Mahinur Özdemir is the first woman to enter a parliament in Europe with a headscarf. The daughter of a Turkish green grocer in Brussels immigrant quarter Schaarbeek,she is the youngest delegate in Brussels new regional parliament.Not only in Belgium,the headscarf has fueled discussion about religious symbols in public,about tolerance,and about integration policies. A portrait of a young woman who was born in Belgium and now sees herself as a representative of a new,self-confident Belgian Muslim immigrant generation.

Dutch
Jong – Ik ben een rechtlijnige moslima

Oem Imran draagt een niqaab. Als ze de straat opgaat, is haar hele lichaam bedekt met een zwart gewaad; alleen haar ogen zijn zichtbaar. Ze zegt: “Ik heb er lak aan wat mensen denken, ik leef toch niet voor de mensen op deze wereld.”

Sinds 11 september 2001 is de angst voor moslims en de islam toegenomen. Het dragen van een burka of niqaab levert vaak negatieve reacties op. Presentator Manuel Venderbos trekt een paar dagen op met Oem Imran om te zien hoe zij leeft en denkt. Manuel bezoekt haar thuis en gaat op straat de discussie aan met omstanders. Een ontmoeting met oud-klasgenoten levert verrassende inzichten op. Maar de echte klapper is dat Oem Imran heel graag wil schieten op een schietvereniging.

Nederlandse Islamitische Omroep » Archief » Da’wah on the streets

Da’wah on the streets 07-09-09

door Halima Taoinza

Wanneer ik vroeger aan het woord da’wah dacht, kwam direct de gedachte bij me op van mensen die de boodschap van de Islam verkondigden op een vurige en eloquente wijze. Toen ik een filmpje had gezien over moslimpredikers die in Hyde Park in Londen tussen allerlei mensen in stonden en dingen zeiden als “Islam is the truth,” en “Why should you be a Muslim“, was mijn beeld compleet. Later leerde ik dat da’wah niet alleen een kwestie is van welbespraaktheid of mensen direct aanspreken en hen proberen te overtuigen van de waarheid, maar dat da’wah een levensstijl is en dat elke moslim dit kan doen op zijn of haar eigen manier. Alles wat je doet of zegt als moslim, kan een aanleiding voor iemand zijn om nader tot de islam te komen of zich er juist van af te wenden. Een wijs persoon zei eens dat de beste da’wah die van je daden is. Doe wat je moet doen en mensen zullen vanzelf onder de indruk raken.

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Closing the week 36

Posted on September 6th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer
Most popular on Closer this week

Featuring Ramadan 2009
30 Mosques in 30 Days
Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq share their Ramadan journey through New York’s Muslim community. They visit 30 mosques throughout the whole month of fasting. The blog has interesting accounts and pictures and is a must read!
Blogging Ramadan Competition – IslamOnline.net – Art & Culture

Believing that Muslim culture is rich, diversified, and inspired by Muslims’ writings and thoughts, [Islam Online’s]Art & Culture Page is launching “Blogging Ramadan” Competition.

Blogging Ramadan is fashioned to be a platform for Muslims to participate with their reflections on the meaning of Ramadan and how they celebrate it in the light of their cultures’ diversity.

Gender
The Global “War on Terror” and Muslim Women | RHRealityCheck.org

We cannot ignore the reality of hatred that is brewing in societies being acted out on Muslim women. Note that my argument is not one that involves whether or not the burqa, purdah, niqab, or hijab is truly a Muslim practice or whether choice is exercised in wearing religious clothing; the fact is that women wear religious clothing and because of this fact they are discriminated against in the context of a growing anti-Muslim sentiment – and this cannot be simply ignored.

French Parliament to Investigate a Possible Ban on the Burqa and Niqab – NYTimes.com

It is a measure of France’s confusion about Islam and its own Muslim citizens that in the political furor here over “banning the burqa,” as the argument goes, the garment at issue is not really the burqa at all, but the niqab.

altmuslim – Honor killings: Rifqa, the Reverend and apostasy

The claims of Fathima Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old Christian convert from Columbus, Ohio who ran away from home in fear of violence by her Muslim father, are being challenged by local authorities who see otherwise. How far will the culture war take this case?

Muslim family: Problems with Rifqa Bary began with laptop gift — OrlandoSentinel.com

Mohamed Bary is a doting Muslim father, intent on giving his daughter the best education he can. But he says he made a terrible mistake last October: He bought her a laptop computer.

Because of that laptop and access to the Internet, he says he lost his daughter to Christian extremists.

Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, is 800 miles away, living with a Christian foster family in the Orlando area. She is a runaway who has become a cause célèbre among evangelical Christians. She fled Ohio last month, saying her father had threatened to kill her because she had converted to Christianity.

Not true, Mohamed Bary said.

Anthropology
Is autonomy as a universal aspiration?

During the teen years, kids in Asian and Western cultures alike gravitate toward a broader class of moral imperatives, including rights to privacy, education and freedom of speech, Helwig and colleagues find in another new study published in the August Social Development. Adolescents also appeal to democratic notions, such as majority rule, to justify a preference for representative forms of government — even if they live in a communist or authoritarian society.

tabsir.net » Saudi- Iranian War fought in Sa’ada

Over 5000 people have died in the ongoing war in Sa’ada, 45,000 have been injured and more than 200,000 displaced and living in tents, eating charity food, and sleeping through cold nights.
Saudis and Iranians have convinced the Yemeni government and Houthis to fight each other for nothing.

Question of the day… – Open Anthropology Cooperative

So, is anthropology an apolitical endeavor? Or is it inherently political?

You. Tell. Me.

‘ilm al-insaan ??? ???????: Orthodoxy and New Media in Cairo

Michael Slackman in yesterday’s NYTimes highlighted the greater reach that new media in Egypt has offered dissenting voices in debates on Islam. Using the example of Gamel Al-Banna (brother of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Banna) and his recent positive statements over tolerance within the Muslim community, Slackman has pointed out the ways in which the internet as well as other forms of new media offer public forums in which conservative visions of orthopraxy can be actively challenged and debated.

Dutch
Burgerschap op school: alleen papier – Trouw

Burgerschap op school: alleen papier

Sinds 2006 moeten scholen ook werken aan burgerschap en sociale integratie. Maar wat dat precies is? „Een school kan zelf keuzes maken, de overheid wil dat niet sluitend voorschrijven”, aldus de onderwijsinspectie.

NRC commentaar » Niet bij rekenen alleen

Het bestuur van de islamitische basisscholen As-Siddieq in Amsterdam speelt de vermoorde onschuld. De beslissing van staatssecretaris Dijksma (Onderwijs, PvdA) en wethouder Asscher (Financiën, PvdA) om op de overheidssubsidie voor de bijzondere school te korten, is volgens een bestuurder een „misverstand” gebaseerd op „gevoelens”. Maar de sancties kunnen amper een verrassing zijn geweest.

Lezen leer je op de As-Siddieq – Opinie – de Volkskrant

Er moet een politieke keuze gemaakt worden: het toelaten van succesvolle islamitische scholen, die echter met de rug naar de Nederlandse samenleving staan, of het echt zorgen voor een betere kwaliteit van alle scholen, ongeacht of het bestuur zo prettig meewerkt. Dan pas vervalt de reden voor ouders hun kind naar orthodoxe scholen te sturen: onderwijs waar men goed taal en rekenen leert, zodat hun kind verder komt.

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Closing the week 31 – Featuring the March of the Extremists

Posted on August 2nd, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Featuring the March to Extremism in Europe
The March to the Far Right – TIME

The March to the Far Right

Front-page feature by Catherine Mayer on the turn to the far-right in Europe, focusing on four parties: the BNP, France’s Front National (FN), Hungary’s Jobbik and Geert Wilders’ Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV).
Sunny on Pickled Politics provide us with some useful comments:
Pickled Politics » The rise of the far-right across Europe

1. It’s good that Geert Wilders is being included in the list of the ‘far-right’. I’ve been saying this for ages. It’s also worth nothing that he has supporters in the UK, especially Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion. That tells you a lot about their politics.

2. The writer does a good job of capturing the dilemmas for anti-facists:

…the urgent question is how best to contain the surge. Deny far-right leaders the oxygen of publicity? Tricky — they have a democratic mandate. Confront them? That risks casting them as martyrs, victims who tell unpalatable truths. Expose the racism that often underlies professions of patriotism? Well, yes, but that assumes voters choose far-right parties in ignorance of their views, rather than because they strike a chord. Steal their nationalist thunder by taking tough lines on issues such as immigration? This smacks of capitulation to the very ideas critics seek to defeat.

3. There are some hints towards, but not a deeper look at the solutions. These would be: (a) have politics more about grassroots campaigning and organising; (b) have Parliament more representative of class, gender and race; (c) raising rather than doing anything about people’s concerns (on immigration, globalisation, poverty, housing etc), as Sarkozy has done, while promoting diversity.

I do wonder however if these parties can simply be called far right. Much of their features and those of its constituences pertain to what Seymour Lipset has called ‘extremism of the center’ (combined with right wing extremism): On Post-Fascism

As one of the greatest and most level-headed masters of twentieth-century political sociology, Seymour Martin Lipset, has noted, fascism is the extremism of the center.Fascism had very little to do with passéiste feudal, aristocratic, monarchist ideas, was on the whole anti-clerical, opposed communism and socialist revolution, and–like the liberals whose electorate it had inherited–hated big business, trade unions, and the social welfare state. Lipset had classically shown that extremisms of the left and right were by no means exclusive: some petty bourgeois attitudes suspecting big business and big government could be, and were, prolonged into an extremism that proved lethal. Right-wing and center extremisms were combined in Hungarian, Austrian, Croatian, Slovak para-fascism (I have borrowed this term from Roger Griffin) of a pseudo-Christian, clericalist, royalist coloring, but extremism of the center does and did exist, proved by Lipset also through continuities in electoral geography.

Today there is nothing of any importance on the political horizon but the bourgeois center, therefore its extremism is the most likely to reappear. (Jörg Haider and his Freedom Party are the best example of this. Parts of his discourse are libertarian/neoliberal, his ideal is the propertied little man, he strongly favors a shareholding and home-owning petty bourgeois “democracy,” and he is quite free of romantic-reactionary nationalism as distinct from parochial selfishness and racism.)

The same can be said I think for Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party. With fascism it shares a strong sense of (cultural) nationalism, a protectionist view of economy, suspicion of religion and a strong belief in the superiority of Western civilization. Simple slogans and truisms, anti-intellectualism and anti-establishment are very much part of the its political spirit. It is also very much concerned with freedom and liberty of the people although the current parties are more concerned with the freedom of the individual than with the freedom of the people as an organic whole. The political views of Wilders and others are not necessarily grounded in fascism (and this is where much of the comparisons are flawed I think) but they relate to particular aspects of social life in which many people are concerned about. The political center among a population does not have to be fascist or extremist in the sense of a consistent ideological approach but they may favor extreme approaches to fringe groups who are labelled as asocial, anti-societal, deviant, dangerous or radical. In this case the perception that Islam is a problem ‘we’ have to solve urgently is widely shared with political parties on the center and left who think Islam can and should be changed and parties on the right who think Islam cannot be changed and therefore has to be stopped. Therefore at least Wilders’ PVV (I’m not sure about the other parties) I think can be analyzed better as ‘extremism of the center’ its main claim being Europe is becoming Islamized. A thesis that has been severely contested and proves flawed:

IRR: Christopher Caldwell dissected

‘Can Europe be the same with different people in it?’ asks the question on the front cover. For Caldwell the question is purely rhetorical, particularly when these ‘different’ people are Muslims. At the end of his book he concludes that: ‘It is certain that Europe will emerge changed from its confrontation with Islam. It is far less certain that Islam will prove assimilable’ since ‘when an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter’. If Muslims should not prove ‘assimilable’ then what should be done with them? The nuanced observer does not say, but he does not need to, when so many others are saying it for him. And the uncritical reception given to this artful anti-Muslim diatribe in liberal circles is a depressing reminder of the extent to which its essential assumptions have moved from the political margins to form a new mainstream consensus.

Anthropology
Links: Debates on Iran and Leftist Politics « OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY

As often happens in the heat of debate, the “really big” assumptions behind certain perceptions remain unquestioned. I believe that these are some that need to be addressed before the debate can continue fruitfully:

1. When writers use the term “left” what exactly do they mean?
2. Are all leftists anti-imperialist?
3. Are all anti-imperialists leftist?
4. What theory, or theories, of imperialism are at work here in order for us to know what writers mean by imperialism, and for judging the basis on which Iran’s current regime is anti-imperialist?

The cultural significance of Internet practices « media/anthropology

The ethnographic study of Internet in 2000 gives us useful baseline: Miller and Slater, Hine, Zurawski. Key debate was whether you could study online phenomena in their own right, without tracing them back to their everyday offline contexts. On one side of the debate, Miller and Slater argue starting point should be the myriad practices and specific contexts of daily life, including online practices as part of – not apart from – those contexts. They back this up with ethnography of Internet on the island of Trinidad and among Trini diaspora. On the other side, Hine argues you can indeed study online practices and communities in their own right, and seeks to demonstrates this with own ethnographic study of online groups formed in support of an English nanny accused of killing a baby in America.

In this article I review four works completed eight years later, in 2008. What are the debates now? What’s the state of the anthropological/ethnographic study of the Internet eight years on, the new baseline? I argue that the online/offline methodological debate has been revived with Boellstorff’s ethnography of Second Life and should not be dismissed or explained away as it remains important. But I also suggest we need to pay heed to the great labour of the new generation of anthros studying the internet of empirically documenting and seeking to understand Internet practices both ethnographically and historically (esp. Kelty). These include online/inworld practices studied in their own right (Second Life) as well as practices that traverse sites and domains (Free Software, internet filmmaking, digital integration projects).

The theoretical approaches adopted in order to assess the cultural significance of these new Internet practices merit attention as well: recursive publics (Kelty), techne (Boellstorff), actor-network theory (Hinkelbein), practice theory (Roig).

Personal noteI think this is a very important review that takes up the old online-offline debate again. In our researchgroup both Carmen Becker and myself are dealing with the issue.
Teaching Anthropology: Welcome to My World

Enough said?

Now does everyone understand why I rant so much. Any and all expressions of pity, outrage, disgust, and disbelief are most welcome.

Making Sense of Darfur » Blog Archive » Poverty and Maldistribution: Sudan’s Fundamental Security Challenge

In the recent US Congressional hearings on a review of US policy on Sudan, little was said about the crushing burden of poverty that confronts the average Sudanese– from the outskirts of Khartoum to the outer fringes of this vast and isolated country; the perennial displacement of people occasioned by conflict ,disease, and climate change; and the lack of opportunity and isolation imposed on a generation of Sudanese by both national and international actors. While Darfur represents its most wretched and heart wrenching visage, displacement and destitution visited upon a hapless people is no less apparent in the Nuba Mountains, the Red Sea hills, the rolling plains of Blue Nile State, the drowned cataracts of the Nile, the formless shantytowns of South Sudan, and the teeming suburbs of Khartoum etched on the desert sands. Such is the reality of Sudan.

ethnosnacker: Ethnography & the arts

I must admit to having no idea what we would uncover when I proposed a small study to try to understand how the arts (galleries, concerts, theatre, etc.) fitted into people’s lives.

Gender
Op-Ed Columnist – Not a Victim, but a Hero – NYTimes.com

After being kidnapped at the age of 16 by a group of thugs and enduring a year of rapes and beatings, Assiya Rafiq was delivered to the police and thought her problems were over.

Then, she said, four police officers took turns raping her.

The next step for Assiya was obvious: She should commit suicide. That’s the customary escape in rural Pakistan for a raped woman, as the only way to cleanse the disgrace to her entire family.

Instead, Assiya summoned the unimaginable courage to go public and fight back. She is seeking to prosecute both her kidnappers and the police, despite threats against her and her younger sisters. This is a kid who left me awed and biting my lip; this isn’t a tale of victimization but of valor, empowerment and uncommon heroism.

“I decided to prosecute because I don’t want the same thing to happen to anybody else,” she said firmly.

Rise in Canadian ‘honour killings’ should not be ignored: expert

As many as 5,000 women and girls lose their lives — most at the hands of family members — in “honour killings” around the world each year, according to the United Nations.

Up to a dozen have died for the same reason in Canada in the last decade, and it’s happening more often, says Amin Muhammad, a psychiatrist who studies honour killings at Memorial University in Newfoundland.

“There are a number of organizations which don’t accept the idea of honour killing; they say it’s a Western-propagated myth by the media, but it’s not true,” he says. “Honour killing is there, and we should acknowledge it, and Canada should take it seriously.”

Patriarchy and violence against women exist in all societies

Immigrant and Muslim women are often put in a paralyzing position when violence occurs against such women in Canada.

This position is a result of the media’s misunderstanding of how patriarchy manifests itself in societies around the world, including North America. This misunderstand forces us and our communities to fight the racism in media reports and readers’ commentaries when we should otherwise be facing the challenge of eliminating all forms of control and violence against women and children.

[…]Gender violence must be analyzed comprehensively, not viewed as a “cultural problem” among certain communities. If a white man kills his partner and/or children, he is seen as a murderer and a “bad apple.” But when non-whites and non-Christians kill, the crime is often called an “honour killing” and entire communities and cultures are labelled as “backward.”

[…]

Indeed, as Adeema Niazi of the Toronto-based Afghan Women’s Organization states: “Violence against women exists everywhere.”

Middle East Online

Muslim women use mosques to reclaim their rights

Patriarchy progressively challenged by female reformers in the name of original Islam.

By John Esposito – WASHINGTON, DC

Like the status of women in all the World’s religions, in Islam and Muslim societies patriarchy played and in many cases continues to influence the status and roles of women. The place of women in the formative period of Islam reflected Qur’anic concerns for the status and rights of women as well as the patriarchal structure of the societies in which Islamic law was developed and elaborated. The status of women and the family in Islamic law was the product of Arab culture, Qur’anic reforms, and foreign ideas and values assimilated from conquered peoples. While the Qur’an introduced substantial reforms, providing new regulations and modifying local custom and practice, at the same time, much of the traditional pre-Islamic social structure with its extended family, the paramount position of males, the roles and responsibilities of its members, and family values was incorporated.

A new source of women’s empowerment today has become active participation in the mosque and use of Islam’s tradition to reclaim their rights in Islam. Reformers today emphasize that just as women during the time of the Prophet prayed in the mosque, so too today they actively exercise that right. In the centuries after the death of Muhammad, women played a small but significant role as transmitters of hadith (prophetic traditions) and in the development of Sufism (Islamic mysticism). Gradually, however, women’s religious role and practice, particularly their access to education and the mosque, were severely restricted. Male religious scholars cited a variety of reasons, from moral degeneration in society to women’s bringing temptation and social discord, to restrict both their presence in public life and their access to education and the mosque.

Walid El Houri: Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

On June 20th 2009, Neda Agha Soltan was shot dead during the post-election protests in Iran. The protests occupied the largest news segments around the world, with analysts and commentators predicting the fall of the Iranian regime and the dawn of freedom breaking in “the axis of evil.”

Neda’s death became an icon of the Iranian opposition and a symbol for millions of people of the injustice of the Iranian regime and the defiance of the protesters. Neda’s death was put in context. It was taken from the personal realm of the death of an individual to the public realm of the just cause of a whole society.

On July 1st Marwa El Sherbini, an Egyptian researcher living in Germany, was stabbed to death 18 times inside a courtroom in the city of Dresden, in front of her 3-year-old son. She had won a verdict against a German man of Russian descent who had verbally assaulted her because of her veil. Her husband, who rushed in to save her when she was attacked in the courtroom, was shot by the police. Marwa’s death was not reported by any Western news media until protests in Egypt erupted after her burial. The reporting that followed focused on the protests; the murder was presented as the act of a “lone wolf,” thus depriving it of its context and its social meaning.

The fact that media are biased and choose what to report according to their own agenda is not the issue in this case. What the comparison of the two murders shows, is that European and Western societies have failed to grasp the significance and the importance of the second murder in its social, political, and historical context.

Burqas, Bans and Feeble Women « Nuseiba

In Mythologies Roland Barthes’s suggested that signs could be used as signifiers for other concepts; those concepts he identified as mythologies formed to perpetuate an idea of society. The myths are artificial constructions, adding a new layer of meaning over text and speech. He highlights that what we accept as being a natural, inductive relationship between the text and the myth is in fact an illusory reality constructed in order to mask the real structure of power.

In her approach Haussegger uses the burka as a loaded symbolic text for an idea – the oppression and subjugation of women. And like Barthes notes, to symbolize is to be. So, even if a garment does not literally restrict, if it signifies restriction then the garment restricts all those who wear it, freely chosen or not. But the myth of oppression constructed around the burqa deprives the burqa of substance; the burqa is distorted to suit the needs of the myth. Though it remains within the concept, it is “half-amputated … deprived of memory … [it is] speech wholly at the service of the concept. The concept, literally, deforms, but does not abolish the meaning … it alienates it.”

[…]

I’m not denying the use of the burqa to oppress and subjugate women. But to then deny that the burqa inhabits a number of uses and roles along with oppression is to deny the inherent dynamism of the burqa. Linking it to one myth and generalising that experience to the whole of Muslim women is patronising and smacks of neo-colonialism. As Nazish Brohi argues in her article “At the Altar of Subalternity: The Quest for Muslim Women in the War on Terror Pakistan after 9/11?, “this selective invocation is reducing spaces for women’s personal identity formation and its political articulation, and by coopting the very language of women’s rights and empowerment and investing in it political strategies, has rendered it ineffective.” And the lingering question remains: banning a garment, a single piece of clothing, doesn’t necessarily combat the ideology that is used when the burqa is forced onto women. A ban would be an empty, symbolic gesture perpetuating another myth and another power structure: Australia’s control over the Others in our midst, dictating that “we” know about democracy, Australian-ness and compassion while “they” do not.

What’s it like being a gay Muslim? | UK news | The Guardian

What’s it like being a gay Muslim?

EastEnders’ current romantic storyline featuring a gay Muslim character has caused a stir. But what is it really like to be gay within Britain’s Muslim communities?

Only 367 Muslim women in France wear full veil – report | World | Reuters

Only 367 women in France wear Islamic veils that cover their faces and bodies, a newspaper reported on Wednesday, undermining the position of politicians who are pushing for a ban on the garments.

A panel of legislators is studying the issue of whether the number of women wearing such veils is on the rise and why. The panel is expected to say in coming months whether it backs a ban on the veils in public places, as advocated by some politicians.

Ramadan
tabsir.net » Hilarious Introduction to Ramadan

Ramadan this year starts in just three weeks. Last Ramadan I was in Indonesia and bootleg copies of a Malaysian produced animated Ramadan TV special were circulating. Upin and Ipin are a pair of Malay twins about 5 or 6 years old whose gang of friends include an Indian boy, a Chinese girl, and two other Muslim boys. I recently showed this to my children as an effort to start teaching them about world religions. They loved it, they laughed so hard. And they learned something about Islam as it is lived, or at least nostalgialized in Malaysia.

Because the series was created to educate Malaysian kids about Ramadan, it is perfect for teaching about Ramadan to American kids.

Virtual Sphere

Saudi Gazette – Google’s abuse of power to take over popular YoutubeIslam.com

“Will we just hand over a million dollar website for free?” questions Yusuf.
“First they said our logo and images were identical to theirs, which was a big lie. Then they changed their direction and called us up on the phone saying we should give them the domain because they are Google, the biggest and most powerful company on the Internet and they can make it difficult for anyone who gets in their way.
“Then they came up with the idea that our domain name sounded too much like theirs and it was confusing people who use the Internet. For that reason, went to the controllers of the Internet itself with their claim and requested what is called arbitration.”
But Sheikh Yusuf Estes says his website’s name cannot be mistaken for Google’s. “Does anyone really have trouble making a distinction between the word ‘youtube’ and ‘youtubeislam’?”
“The fact is, Google got sued for exactly what they claim we are doing, but in their case there really was no difference in the sound. When they bought YouTube for $1.3 billion, the company UTUBE.com sued them as they owned that name on the Internet for 10 years before Google did,” he added.
What Sheikh Yusuf is worried about is the possibility that Google may misuse the website by advertising Haraam things and using it for un-Islamic purposes.
He calls on every Internet user to support his campaign by spreading the message and speaking up against the takeover, as time is running out.
“Without notification in advance, our server, Godaddy.com, sent an email stating due to a decision made by arbitration on the Internet, they are going to give our domain name to Google,” he said.

Dutch

Bekeerd in Elspeet – Trouw

Het christelijk geloof gaf haar niet langer wat ze nodig had. Dus begon Helma Frens (17) een zoektocht langs de wereldreligies. Uiteindelijk belandde zij bij de islam en vond wat ze zocht. Bekeren was toen een kwestie van tijd en durf.

Droomland Marokko stelt vrome moslim teleur – Binnenland – de Volkskrant

Ahrazem is in Nederland opgegroeid, hij woont in Limburg. Aan de Hogeschool Zuyd in Maastricht studeert hij sinds 2006 Arabisch, en hij heeft in Marokko net een cursus Arabisch achter de rug bij het Nederlands Instituut in Rabat. In het begin voelde hij zich gefrustreerd dat uitgerekend hij, die een goed moslim wil zijn, op zijn tellen moet passen in Marokko, het land dat hij altijd meer als zijn vaderland beschouwde dan Nederland.

Nederlands Juridisch Dagblad NJD § Juridisch nieuws – Moslima-verpleegkundige Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis krijgt standaard correctiefactor (c=1)

Het Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis heeft het helemaal gehad met de wensen van een moslima en verzoekt tot ontbinding van de arbeidsovereenkomst. Met succes, 2 augustus a.s. is haar eerste ‘vakantiedag’.

Centrale vraag aldus: in hoeverre mag een ziekenhuis door middel van een kledingvoorschrift (te weten het dragen van korte mouwen) inbreuk mag maken op het grondrecht van een moslima-verpleegkundige om zich te kleden overeenkomstig haar geloofsovertuiging (dwz het dragen van lange of driekwart mouwen)?

Iets waar werkgever en werknemer toch in goed overleg een werkbare oplossing voor hadden kunnen vinden? Normaal wel, maar niet op de dialyse-afdeling. De arbeidsovereenkomst wordt ontbonden en wel onder toekenning van een vergoeding, bepaald met neutrale factor c=1, want de moslima-verpleegkundige kan zich niet schikken in geboden tegemoetkomingen van werkgeefster.

Wettelijk kader in deze casus onder meer de ‘WIP-richtlijn’, die volgens advocaat van werkneemster veelvuldig wordt geschonden in het ziekenhuis.

De inbreuk die het Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis met het kledingvoorschrift maakt op het grondrecht van de verpleegkundige om zich volgens haar geloofsovertuiging te kleden oordeelt kantonrechter mr. G.J. Roeterdink op 13 juli 2009 ‘noodzakelijk, proportioneel en gerechtvaardigd’.

Onderarm moet tot maximaal 15 cm boven pols onbedekt; was ze bij 25 cm wel in dienst gebleven?

Nederlands Juridisch Dagblad NJD § Juridisch nieuws – Moslima-verpleegkundige Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis krijgt standaard correctiefactor (c=1)

Vanwege haar islamitische geloofsovertuiging is [verweerster] verplicht haar armen, inclusief de onderarmen, zoveel mogelijk te bedekken. Om die reden heeft zij gevraagd om onder de bedrijfskleding lange mouwen te mogen dragen en, indien dat niet mogelijk is, om drie-kwart-mouwen te mogen dragen waarbij de onderarm tot maximaal 15 cm. boven de pols onbedekt is.

Het Ziekenhuis heeft het verzoek van [verweerster] in overweging genomen en heeft daartoe gedurende het jaar 2008 meerdere in- en externe adviezen (o.m. van een lid van genoemde Werkgroep) ingewonnen, doch is tot de conclusie gekomen dat moet worden vastgehouden aan bedrijfskleding met korte mouw.

Joods en Wilders stemmen – DePers.nl

Prominente joden als Job Cohen, Harry de Winter en rabbijn Soetendorp zijn felle tegenstanders van Geert Wilders. De joodse PVV-stemmers zijn minder bekend. Maar ze zijn er wel. ‘De joodse elite wil niet dat er gepraat wordt over de woede onder de joden.’

2 comments.

Closing the week 30

Posted on July 26th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer
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Featuring fashion & politics
The niqab, fact v fiction -Times Online

How much do you really know about the niqab? An insider guide to common misconceptions
Fatima Barkatulla
1.The niqab is a symbol of female subjugation.

2. Women who wear the niqab cannot possibly contribute to society

3. The niqab isn’t in the Qur’an

4. Wearing the niqab implies that all men are predatory

5. The niqab poses a security risk at banks and airports

6.Niqab wearers can’t possibly be teachers.

7. Banning the niqab will free those Muslim women who are coerced into wearing it.

Fatima Barkatulla is a regular columnist on SISTERS, the magazine for ‘fabulous Muslim women’

Danish military unit involved in headscarf row – Yahoo! News

A Danish military unit has become embroiled in a dispute about Muslim headscarves after it allowed a hijab-wearing woman to complete a training course.

The Home Guard, a home defense corps of thousands of volunteer soldiers, does not allow headscarves and violated that rule when it allowed Maria Mawla, 27, to wear one during its 10-day basic training program, spokesman Joergen Jensen said Monday.

“We made a mistake internally,” Jensen told The Associated Press.

The issue became national news in Denmark after the populist Danish People’s Party, known for its anti-Muslim outbursts, expressed shock over an article about Mawla posted on the Home Guard’s Web site.

The July 14 article, which has now been removed, described Mawla as a devout Muslim of Lebanese origin who said her headscarf posed no practical obstacles during training. A picture with the article showed her wearing a green headscarf under a camouflage hat.

Video: Muslim fashion – ‘Anyone can wear these clothes’ | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

Muslim fashion: ‘Anyone can wear these clothes’

Riazat Butt meets the designer behind Elenany, a new fashion label for Muslim women that blends modesty and street cred

Personal note: I like the several of the clothes. But do they have something for men as well? 🙂
Media terror – debate

New Statesman – Know your enemy

Terrorism, we know, is not the exclusive preserve or franchise of dark-skinned, bearded Muslims. But nowadays you might not know it from following the news.

Harry’s Place » A cracker of a lie about a bomber

Um, I blogged about this a fortnight ago, and David T blogged about this last November, and both of us got our information from ‘the mainstream press’, so this simply did not ring true.

Harry’s Place » The Senior Editor (Politics) of the New Statesman Writes…

My two favourite bits from your ‘post’ is 1) when you try and cite your own random, unread blogging as evidence that the “media” covered the Cottage, Worrell, Lewington and other stories that I cited in my column. Er, you’re not quite the front page of the Daily Mail, yet, mate. But you certainly don’t lack modesty. And 2) when you say your research is based on ‘Google News’ which, as you say, only goes back a few weeks. If you were a proper journalist, and not a self-appointed rumour-monger, you would know what Lexis-Nexis is and you would note, as I did, in my column, that the number of stories on the likes of Lewington, Gilleard, Cottage and co is miniscule (and includes not a single front page!)

By the way, do you see any mention of the Lewington guilty verdict on the front pages of any national newspaper this morning? Or on the BBC News at Ten headlines or Channel 4 News headlines last night? No? Neither did I. I did see it buried on page 23 (!) of the Telegraph today. Case closed, methinks.

–Pickled Politics » Harry’s Place in selective hysteria shocker

I mean it’s not like there’s a media panic about Muslims is there? It’s not like there’s been stories of Muslim bus drivers chucking people off the bus so he could pray. Obviously there’s not been any on Muslims drawing up a hit-list of prominent Jews to get them back over Gaza. No one could ever imagine a story of Muslim youths attacking a soldier’s house after Afghanistan.

You certainly would not believe that these stories would make the front page AND they turned out to be lies. That would never happen because are media is so balanced. Neither would you see prominent right-wing columnists writing about Eurabia and the ‘coming Muslim threat and all that’. Our press is the paragon of equal treatment to all nasty people. In group bias? That would never happen!

HuT and sex-education
Keep the faith: Should Muslim children receive sex education? – Schools, Education – The Independent

Keep the faith: Should Muslim children receive sex education?

A group run by a member of a radical Islamic organisation is opposing plans to give five-year-olds sex education.

Blogosphere: Tsuredzuregusa
tsuredzuregusa

The husband and I are now full-time travelers: we gave away most of our stuff, threw a few boxes in storage, and since July 1 (2008) we’ve been traveling the continent in our Mini Cooper.

I wondered where she went, but I know: Your Mileage May Vary

Dutch news
nrc.nl – International – Features – Dutch photographer travelled as boat refugee

Dutch photographer travelled as boat refugee
Published: 22 July 2009 17:17 | Changed: 22 July 2009 17:36
By Rosan Hollak
Joël van Houdt followed a Moroccan who made the journey to Europe as an illegal immigrant. The photographer did not want to think too much about the dangers of the boat trip.

A young man in a white T-shirt wearing a white cowboy hat on his head and a smile on his face stands on a pedestrian crossing. Behind him palm trees wave in the breeze, expensive cars are parked along the roadside.

Nothing in this picture, taken by Dutch photographer Joël van Houdt in October 2008, betrays the difficult path this apparently cheerful boy had to take in order to walk in the Spanish sun.

Dutch news – Mosques Refuse Dutch ‘State Imams’

The universities and college courses supply Imams that speak Dutch and understand Dutch society. But the Imams trained in the Netherlands should not count on a job for now. “Poor mosques have no money for expensive, qualified Imams. Additionally, the older generation of mosque-goers, who pay contributions and therefore decide what happens there, do not want a Dutch-speaking Imam at all,” says Trouw.

Netherlands: Muslim youth fear forced marriage | EuropeNews

Many Dutch Muslim youth are afraid that they’ll be married off during vacation and then left in their homeland by their parents. This according to the increasing number of youth who find their way to social workers and hotlines. The government is only slowly moving to help.

Misc.
BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight | Enforced marriage law forces couple apart

Nineteen-year-old Canadian Rochelle Wallis married her Welsh husband Adam in November 2008, two years after they first met and fell in love.

But now Rochelle is about to be deported from the UK and has been told that she will not be able to come back to see Adam until she is 21.
[…]
The UK Border Agency wrote: “This may cause the couple some inconvenience”, but that they had increased the minimum age for spousal visas to 21 to reduce the chance of “forced marriages”.

Israeli TV ad shows Israeli Soldiers Playing Football (Soccer) over the Wall, Palestinians try it out for real and get tear gassed | MR’s Blog

So an Israeli cell phone company made a commercial showing Israeli soldiers playing football (soccer) over the wall with Palestinians.

Always wanted to try a commercial ad for real? See MR what happened in this case.

Fears of an Islamic revolt in Europe begin to fade

Five years ago bombings and riots fuelled anxiety that Europe’s Muslims were on the verge of mass radicalisation. Those predictions have not been borne out.

[…]

The dire predictions of religious and identity-based mayhem reached their peak between 2004 and 2006, when bombs exploded in Madrid and London, a controversial film director was shot and stabbed to death in Amsterdam, and angry demonstrators marched against publication of satirical cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.

[…]

Yet a few years on, though a steady drumbeat of apocalyptic forecasts continues, such fears are beginning to look misplaced. The warnings focus on three elements: the terrorist threat posed by radical Muslim European populations; a cultural “invasion” due to a failure of integration; and demographic “swamping” by Muslim communities with high fertility rates.

A new poll by Gallup, one of the most comprehensive to date, shows that the feared mass radicalisation of the EU’s 20-odd million Muslims has not taken place. Asked if violent attacks on civilians could be justified, 82% of French Muslims and 91% of German Muslims said no. The number who said violence could be used in a “noble cause” was broadly in line with the general population. Crucially, responses were not determined by religious practice – with no difference between devout worshippers and those for whom “religion [was] not important”.

“The numbers have been pretty steady over a number of years,” said Gallup’s Magali Rheault. “It is important to separate the mainstream views from the actions of the fringe groups, who often receive disproportionate attention. Mainstream Muslims do not appear to exhibit extremist behaviour.”

[…]

In the Netherlands, tension between the majority and the Muslim minority has redefined national politics in the past five years. The threat level last year was raised to the second highest level – in part because of the impact on Muslim communities of the success of the anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders. Yet even here security services say they see “the activities of homegrown [militant] cells being stable or diminishing because of a lack of leadership, and internal quarrelling”. This is the view of Judith Sluiter, of the National Co-ordinator for Counterterrorism agency, who adds: “The appeal of the radicals is declining. In the Moroccan community there is growing resistance to Islamic rejection [of Dutch society].”

The Dutch AIVD intelligence service recently reported that among the country’s other main Muslim immigrant community, from Turkey, “resistance to radical Islamic ideologies remains strong … In the short and medium term, there is no danger these [extreme] religious ideas will find many receptive ears in the Dutch Turkish community”.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

Caldwell frames the issue of Muslim immigration to Europe as a question of whether you can have the same Europe with different people. The author, a columnist for the Financial Times and a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, answers this question unequivocally in the negative.

Dutch
Hadith database

hadiths zijn in Nederlands slecht toegankelijk. Ik vertaal zelf vanuit Engels naar Nederlands. Inch’Allah probeer ik een zo goed mogelijke weergave te geven van vele ahadith, gerangschikt op onderwerpen. Commentaar en verbeteringen welkom!

Voor zover ik weet zijn er geen Nederlandstalige hadithvertalingen op het web. Dan is dit dus de eerste.

If you want to stay updated and did not subscribe yet, you can do so HERE

0 comments.

Closing the week 29

Posted on July 19th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Featured current Dutch debates
A Dutch Gist of Remarks – IslamOnline.net – European Muslims

By Mr. Bertus Hendriks

Christian- Islamic relationship went through many phases.
IslamOnline.net (IOL)’s European Muslims zone had the chance to meet with Mr. Bertus Hendriks, a Middle East Analyst and Commentator for the Dutch Public Radio and Television and a Senior Visiting Fellow in Clingendael, The Netherlands Institute of International Relations. In his meeting with the team, he expressed his views on the status of Muslims in Europe, with a special focus on The Netherlands.

In an attempt to present the different European points of view on the issues of Muslims in Europe, we present Mr. Hendriks’ views in which he commented on many issues pertaining to Dutch Muslims.

Mr. Hendriks tried to track the different phases that the Dutch Muslim community went through when they first arrived to The Netherlands as “guest workers” till the present time. He tackled many developments and factors that shaped their current stance and their integration process into the Dutch community.

Political Games & Muslims in Netherlands (Part Two) – IslamOnline.net – European Muslims

In the first part, Mr. Bertus Hendriks gave a brief summary of the historical background of Muslims’ existence in Europe. He highlighted the major elements affecting Muslims’ integration there, giving real examples from life to second his viewpoint. Mr. Hendriks assured that the current status of immigrants is not born today; rather it is an accumulative one. Some big internal and external differences stand as obstacles to the full acceptance of those “new comers” in the European society. In this part, he continues raising some of the major Muslim-related issues mainly in The Netherlands, pointing out the political games that have great influence on their lives.

Battle brewing over single-sex classes for Muslim women | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Utrecht city councillor Marka Spit says she is going to ignore Dutch Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan’s plan to abolish segregated integration courses as of January 2009. Various Dutch media report that the two politicians, both members of the Labour Party (PvdA), disagree on whether segregated integration classes benefit or undermine the emancipation of Muslim women in the Netherlands.

Moroccan biscuits for Wilders – a video report | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

“In my opinion, you have nothing to fear,” Geert Wilders tells RNW journalist Mohamed Amezian, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent. Mr Amezian has found himself interviewing the politician who makes The Hague nervous, who has declared war on Islam and who wants to deport ‘criminal foreigners’.

A simple question: will the Dutch accept Guantánamo prisoners? | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende recently hinted that the Netherlands would accept detainees from Guantánamo Bay, which US president Barack Obama plans to close by January 2010. Despite originally saying “no”, the Netherlands has had its hand forced by other European countries agreeing, such as France, Begium, Spain and Italy.

nrc.nl – International – A war of words over Guantánamo

By Herman Staal
What exactly did prime minister Balkenende promise president Obama in Washington about taking in detainees from Guantánamo Bay? The Dutch parliament would like to know too.

Hijab issues
Couture abayas on Paris runway

The Saks Fifth Avenue Riyadh and Jeddah fashion show was held at the end of June 2009 and featured 22 custom made Haute Couture abayas. According to the Associated Press the abayas were customized by international designers.

The show was held on June 25th at the George V hotel in Paris.

Here are some of the abyas they showcased:

France exports Islamic veils

FASHION week in Paris, and after a display of pink and purple mini-dresses in an elegant apartment near the presidential palace, an assistant wheels out a rack bearing two very different creations: black abayas.

‘ISLAMOPHOBIA’
‘IF YOU wear the veil, you get insulted and attacked all the time, you get called a terrorist,’ said Ikram Es-Salhi, a 20-year-old student standing outside the Zeina Pret-A-Porter shop that sells mass-produced headscarves, tunics and abayas.

Es-Salhi wears a long brown veil that covers her head and body but leaves her face open. She would like to wear the full niqab, but it is banned at her college.

‘MAKE no mistake, the burqa is a political debate, not a religious one. Extremists are once again testing the Republic,’ said Jean-Francois Cope, a senior member of the ruling UMP party, in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper.

Several UMP members want it banned.

The billowing gowns, usually worn with a veil, have been made for the Saudi market by Paris-based couturier Adam Jones.

French row over burqa ban unveils contradictions | International | Reuters

As France considers banning full facial veils such as the niqab and the burqa, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has said is not welcome here, the fact that it is a major exporter of couture abayas may seem odd.

But that is just one of the many contradictions exposed by the latest clash between secularism and religion in the home of Europe’s largest Muslim community.

“If someone tells me, ‘design an abaya,’ why not, I’m proud of that. It’s just a garment,” haute couture designer Stephane Rolland, who has made many abayas for Middle Eastern clients, told Reuters backstage after his fashion show in Paris.

When asked about the broader debate whether veils are a sign of subservience and should be outlawed, his confidence wavered.

“I don’t want to speak about religion, that’s a different subject. But I don’t want to cover the woman — alas, I don’t want to think about that,” he said before turning away.

Belgian court overturns headscarf sacking of teacher < Belgian news | Expatica Belgium

Belgian court overturns headscarf sacking of teacher
Belgium’s highest administrative court has overturned the sacking of a Muslim woman teacher by two schools because she wore a headscarf, national press reported Friday.

Islamization of Europe?

Why Fears Of A Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong | Print Article | Newsweek.com

But all this obscures a simple fact: the rise of a Eurabia is predicated on limited and dubious evidence. A much-cited 2004 study from the U.S. National Intelligence Council outlines a number of possible scenarios. Its most aggressive is that the number of Muslims in Europe could increase from roughly 20 million today—about 5 percent of the population—to 38 million by 2025. But that projection turns out to be attributed to “diplomatic and media reporting as well as government, academic, and other sources.” In other words, it’s all speculation based on speculation—and even if it’s accurate, it would still mean the number of Muslims will represent just 8 percent of the European population, estimated by the EU to be 470 million in 2025. Indeed, if there is a surge ahead, its scale looks overstated. “There is a quite deliberate exaggeration, as has often been pointed out—but the figures are still being cited,” says Jytte Klausen, an authority on Islam in Europe at Boston’s Brandeis University.

Radical movements and counterradicalization
Hamas: Ideological Rigidity and Political Flexibility | Middle East Studies

Discussion in the United States regarding Hamas is usually framed by two somewhat contradictory assumptions: (1) that Hamas is ideologically incapable of evolving to accept the existence of Israel and (2) that isolation and strong pressure are the only tools that may force it to recognize Israel. This controversial report challenges both assumptions. On the one hand, the authors make a case for recognizing that Hamas has already, in certain respects, changed and has sent signals regarding its possible coexistence with Israel. On the other hand, they conclude that Hamas might never “recognize” Israel in the conventional sense and that, since Hamas apparently cannot be eliminated, attempts to engage it must take into account its commitment to the strictures of shari’a.
In other words, the report attempts to inject some gray areas into an issue that is often framed only in black and white terms. In a unique approach, the authors do not ask us to necessarily change our conclusions about the value of such engagement. Instead, they invite us to reevaluate our assumptions by providing a new prism through which to analyze Hamas. The authors themselves–one Jewish and the other Muslim–have very different lenses on this conflict. They disagree on the definition of the conflict and have differing views of how it can be resolved, but they share the goal of providing a framework for understanding Hamas, its motivations, and its selfconcept, and of presenting alternative criteria for interpreting the signals that it sends. The authors neither endorse Hamas’s actions or positions nor advocate taking Hamas’s claims at face value, and they certainly do not argue that Israel, the United States, and the West should drop demands for changes by Hamas. On the contrary, they offer a framework to help policymakers develop and deliver such demands more effectively, a framework that takes into account how Hamas views itself and how many in the Muslim world understand the movement. With U.S. allies such as Egypt and Jordan pressing for a Palestinian unity government inclusive of Hamas, it is imperative to consider what kinds of conditions and safeguards would contribute to a successful peace process rather than derail it.

Blogosphere
Islam for Parents » First Ever American Muslim Mom Online Magazine Launched!

mericanMuslimMom.com is the first and only online magazine that offers free tips, tools, reviews, contests and resources for Muslim Moms living in America.
AmericanMuslimMom.com is an online magazine aimed for Muslim Moms living in America or American Muslim Moms living aboard. American Muslim Mom began as a family blog in 2005, and has blossomed to a repository of useful articles for Muslim Moms aimed to help them with all aspects of raising Mu’miniyn (true believers) in a non-Muslim country.

Dutch

‘Moslims lopen weg bij PvdA’ – DePers.nl

Over moslims in Nederland wordt volgens het Rotterdamse raadslid Fouad el Haji gesproken ‘alsof ze allemaal streng gelovig zijn’. ‘De meeste Marokkaanse moslims in Nederland zijn seculier’, zegt El Haji. ‘In het politieke landschap is daar geen podium voor. Daarmee doe je hen tekort. Dat zijn de natuurlijke bondgenoten van de PvdA.’ El Haji zegt hiervoor tot dusver bij de partijtop geen gehoor te krijgen. Hij bepleit een lobby voor deze groep in de PvdA.

Je wordt hier geïslamiseerd waar je bij staat – DePers.nl

Mohandis pleit voor meer secularisme binnen de partij. ‘Een samenleving waarin de scheiding tussen kerk en staat strikt wordt toegepast. Religie is een privézaak. Zelf haal ik periodiek mijn inspiraties uit geloof, maar ik zal daar geen buurman of partijgenoot mee lastigvallen. Houd religie voor jezelf. Ik spreek atheïstische Marokkanen en seculiere moslims die zeggen: waarom bemoeit de PvdA zich zo met religie? Die sluiten zich aan bij D66 omdat ze dat een meer vrijzinnige partij vinden.’

AD.nl – Economie – Geen Marokkanen in AH to go-winkels

Diverse filialen van Albert Heijn to go op treinstations willen medewerkers van Marokkaanse afkomst buiten de deur houden.
Dat blijkt uit een recent overzicht van de afdeling personeelszaken waarin wordt opgesomd op welke tijden en dagen extra krachten nodig zijn.

‘Geen Marokkanen!’ staat er vetgedrukt bij de winkels Amsterdam- Westtunnel, Amsterdam Lelylaan en Den Haag Centraal Station.

De lijst werd donderdag 4 juni per e-mail naar 31 Albert Heijn to go winkels (kleine supers voor de snelle boodschap) gestuurd. De filiaalmanagers konden vervolgens aangeven ‘of deze nog klopt’. Vanuit een van de filialen kreeg personeelszaken dezelfde ochtend nogmaals het verzoek: ,,Dringend! Geen Marokkanen!”

[…]

Volgens Albert Heijn-woordvoerster Buining is het een ‘raadsel’ waarom een aantal To go-winkels Marokkanen wil weren.

,,Wij hebben medewerkers uit wel honderd verschillende culturen in dienst. Onderscheid naar etnische afkomst tolereren wij niet.”
[…]
Volgens een anonieme medewerker van AH to go vinden de filiaalmanagers in Amsterdam en Den Haag dat er ‘meer dan genoeg Marokkaanse jongens werken en over de vloer komen’. ,,Dat zou bedreigend overkomen voor andere klanten.”

De rancunisering van Europa | NRC Boeken

Twee veronderstellingen domineren deze boeken: ‘de islam’ is erop uit Europa over te nemen (en is aan de winnende hand) en de moslims hier vormen een bruggehoofd voor die kolonisatie. Dat de islam aan het ‘winnen’ is moet, behalve uit cijfers over immigratie, blijken uit de censuur die Europese samenlevingen zichzelf opleggen: je mag ‘niks’ over de islam zeggen, op straffe van intellectueel ostracisme, juridische knevelarij, of erger. Zie de vervolging van de assimilationistische politicus Geert Wilders en de moord op Theo van Gogh, een gruweldaad die een scharnierpunt is gebleken in de radicalisering van de Nederlandse islamkritiek.

Aan die laatste feiten is natuurlijk niets af te doen. Europese samenlevingen worstelen hevig met de steeds zichtbaardere plaats die grote aantallen moslims erin innemen. En inderdaad, het onbekommerde multiculturalisme van weleer biedt geen soelaas meer voor een breed gedeeld gevoel van vervreemding en ontworteling. Radicaal islamitisch activisme is intussen een vehikel geworden voor adolescente onvrede en zelfs voor terrorisme. De gevaren daarvan zijn zeker reëel.

Maar dat betekent nog niet dat er een levensvatbaar islamitisch plan zou bestaan om Europa te bezetten, waarvan de huidige generaties islamitische immigranten de op afstand bestuurde vijfde colonne zouden zijn.

’Moskee kan oplossing bieden’ – Trouw

Imams preken, ze vertellen hoe het allemaal moet, „maar dat is niet meer van deze tijd, van deze samenleving”, zegt Elforkani, die een beeld schetst van superstrenge koranleraren en autoritaire vaders. „In de opvoeding was alles eenrichtingsverkeer, zonder ruimte voor dialoog. Desondanks ontwikkelen jongeren hun eigen mening. Ze willen zelf bedenken wat ze van dingen in de islam vinden. Dat is goed. Allah heeft niets aan automatische piloten.”

De drempels van moskeeën moeten omlaag, desnoods moeten imams de straat op, denkt Elforkani. Om te luisteren naar wat ze bezig houdt. „Het geloof is hun zwakke plek. Daar ligt het vertrekpunt richting een betere toekomst waarin ze niet alleen in woord, maar ook in daad echte moslims zijn.”

Al-yaqeen

7. Wij zijn zoals u weet een Islamitische website. Welke beelden roepen de Islam bij u op?

Het beeld van een geloof dat een deel van de Nederlanders aanhangt. Voor de werkvloer zou dat niets moeten uitmaken. Ik ben katholiek opgevoed, maarik geloof zelf niet meer. Wel heb ik absoluut respect voor het geloof van anderen. Of dat nu het katholieke of Islamitische geloof is. Ik zie het als een individuele keuze van mensen. Wij hebben hier uiteraard bij de FNV ook Islamitische collega’s.

Al-yaqeen

Ondankbaarheid tonen voor een genieting geschiedt door het zich vergrijpen aan de zonde en het onrechtmatig uitbesteden van bezit aan zaken zoals ontucht, alcohol, sigaretten, kansspelen enz. Onder deze noemer valt ook het vermeerderen van het vermogen door drugshandel, prostitutie en bedrog. Maar ook het onterecht aanspraak maken op sociale financiële steun door het zich schuldig maken aan het verstrekken van valse gegevens aan uitkeringsinstanties.

Tot slot wil ik benadrukken dat onze praktiserende, intellectuele jongeren zich dienen in te spannen om organisaties op te zetten die zich bezighouden met het monitoren van misstanden tegen moslims, het behartigen van hun belangen en het waarborgen van hun rechten. Vooral nu wij te maken hebben met een toename van anti-islamitisch gescandeer uit extreemrechtse hoek dat zich op de eerste plaats toespitst op de moslimvrouw en haar hoofddoek. Nog schrikbarender is het feit dat deze anti-islamitische tendensen tegenwoordig niet slechts stoppen bij gescandeer, maar dat de daad bij het woord wordt gevoegd in de vorm van geweld tegen moslims. Dit terwijl de media en de politiek bewust de andere kant op kijken.

Bij het uitblijven van een krachtige veroordeling van de toegenomen islamofobie zouden deze jongeren de mogelijkheid dienen te benutten om via digitale media, zoals internetsites, de massa op de hoogte te stellen van de diverse misstanden tegenover moslims die strijdig zijn met de meest basale mensenrechten.

AD.nl – Den Haag, Wassenaar, Voorschoten – ‘Met tengels van moskee afblijven’

dat de SP in de Haagse gemeenteraad ‘voortaan met haar tengels van de moskeeën moet afblijven’.

De moskee reageert op vragen van de SP en de VVD aan het gemeentebestuur. Aanleiding is een tv-uitzending van Netwerk van enige weken geleden waarin imam Fawaz om commentaar was gevraagd over de situatie waarbij moslima’s na een Nederlandse scheiding niet kunnen hertrouwen omdat er geen islamitische afhandeling heeft plaatsgevonden. „De imam gaf toen te kennen dat het Nederlands rechtsstelsel advies inwint van islamitische deskundigen,’’ aldus team al-Yaqeen en daar is volgens hen niets mis mee. ‘Dus nogmaals SP: bemoei jullie niet met ons!’

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Closing the week 28

Posted on July 12th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer

Most popular this week:

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Featured
Uighur Muslims Crushed in East Turkistan – IslamOnline.net – Politics in Depth

The harsh, brutal, and bloody crackdown by the Chinese authorities on the Uighur Muslim people in East Turkistan, also known as Xinjiang, cannot be tolerated any longer.

Internet, Blogs Solace Oppressed Uighurs – IslamOnline.net – News

With a dawn-to-dusk curfew, internet blackout, blocking graphic images of beaten and bloody bodies, bloggers and social-networking websites are giving voice to China’s several-million Muslim Uighurs in the face of a massive crackdown.

Foreign Policy: Why Twitter Failed The Uighurs : NPR

Given the current oversupply of Twitter experts, it’s strange that nobody told the Uighurs that staging a protest in the week of Michael Jackson’s funeral is not going to propel them into the top charts of Twitter’s most discussed items. What a bummer – Michael Jackson is still topic number one on Twitter, the Uighurs are not even in top 10, and the Internet-savvy whizzes of the State Department are nowhere to be seen.

Managing Dissent in China and Iran – The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com

Just weeks after the disputed presidential election in Iran, outside observers find themselves in a somewhat familiar situation: trying to piece together a sense of what is happening in China’s Xinjiang Province in the aftermath of anti-government protests that turned violent. In China, as in Iran, state-controlled media has called the protesters “rioters” and the violence on the streets “terrorism” rather than characterizing it as a spontaneous reaction by demonstrators confronted by security forces.

As my colleague Michael Wines reported on Monday, getting a clear sense of what is happening on the streets of Urumqi is not made easier by the fact that China’s government, like Iran’s, has made a concerted effort to control information about the unrest by placing restrictions on the foreign press and limiting access to the Internet for government opponents. So once again we find ourselves reading reports from news outlets controlled by or sympathetic to the state, relying on what foreign reporters who have been given strictly limited access to the area can learn and following the Twitter feeds of bloggers who reflect on and translate some of what is being said inside the country.

Unrest in Urumqi, China | World news | guardian.co.uk

Unrest in Urumqi, China (44 pictures)

Uighurs News – The New York Times

Uighurs (Chinese Ethnic Group)

Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: Leveraging Information Terrain

The Uighur protest/riot/crackdown in China provides some interesting data points on the uses of information terrain to disrupt social networks. Note the amplification.

Marwa El-Sherbini
Is Europe really Islamophobic? | Nesrine Malik | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Bloggers and commentators have played the “what if” game, reversing the race and nationality of the victim and attacker in order to highlight the muted response from Germans (and Europeans more generally). The murder of Theo van Gogh has also been invoked as an example of the unequal value attached to the lives of Muslims and non-Muslims. The outcry has sparked calls for severing links with Germany and even declaring a “world hijab day” to honour Marwa’s memory. The fact that the murder was committed by a reported neo-Nazi in Germany does little to temper a perception that Muslims are the targets of racial hatred.

[…]However, it’s a big step from that to the image of comprehensive, conspiratorial, institutional discrimination against Muslims in Europe that is gaining ground in Arab countries and spurring calls for the severance of diplomatic relations and boycotting of products. Muslims (me included) constantly protest that the actions of a few extremists should not be allowed to denigrate Islam and its adherents as a whole – but this is exactly what they are doing themselves in connection with Europeans and the actions of Axel W.

Publications
“Gaining Knowledge”: Salafi Activism in German and Dutch Online Forums | Digital Islam

Carmen Becker
Recent years have witnessed an expansion of Salafi activism into computer-mediated environments like online discussion forums. Forum activities are part of the activists’ endeavor to access the religious sources (Quran and Sunnah) and, through these sources, the lives of the prophet Muhammad and the first generations of Muslims. The prophet and the first generations embody the perfect model of a (Muslim) life which Salafi activists strive to emulate. This article analyses the knowledge practices of Salafi activists in Dutch and German discussion forums revolving around the religious sources. Knowledge practices are understood as meaning-making activities that tell people how to behave and how to “be in the world”. Four aspects are central to Salafi knowledge practices in Dutch and German forums: (1) Fragmentation and re-alignment form the basic ways of dealing with digitized corpus of Islamic knowledge and (2) open the way for Salafi activists to engage in “Islamic argumentation” in the course of which they “excavate” behavioral rules in form of a “script” from Quran and Sunnah. (3) These practices are set within the cognitive collaboration of forum members and part of a broader decentralizing tendency within Islam. (4) And finally, narratives and sensual environments circulating in forums help activists to overcome contradictions and ambiguities while trying to put the script, which tells them what to do in which situation, into practice.

Zero Intelligence Agents » Understanding the Survival Mechanisms of Global Salafi Jihad

Understanding the Survival Mechanisms of Global Salafi Jihad
By Drew Conway, on June 3rd, 2009

Understanding the temporal dynamics of networks is what many researchers in the field consider the “holy grail” of the science. As people in national security realm began to understand the structure of terrorist organizations as networks, the ability to track and predict their growth and decay became the center piece of much their research. Unfortunately, at present we lack the requisite mathematics needed to truly understand the trajectory of these systems. At best, thorough case studies of good data can help inform our understanding of these dynamics, and this is the approach taken in a new study entitled, “The Dynamics of Terrorist Networks: Understanding the Survival Mechanisms of Global Salafi Jihad.”

Qaradawi’s Revisions | Marc Lynch

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, probably the single most influential living Sunni Islamist figure, has just written a major book entitled Fiqh al-Jihad (The Jurisprudence of Jihad) which decisively repudiates al Qaeda’s conception of jihad as a “mad declaration of war upon the world.” At the same time, he strongly rejects what he calls efforts to remove jihad completely from Islam, and strongly reaffirms the duty of jihad in resisting the occupation of Muslim lands, specifically mentioning Israel as the arena of legitimate resistance. Qaradawi’s intervention has thus far received no attention at all in the English-language media. It should, because of his vast influence and his long track record as an accurate barometer of mainstream Arab views.

Thesis: Hijab empowers women

What is it like being veiled and working in Australian companies? Anthropologist Siham Ouazzif sent me her thesis “Veiled Muslim Women in Australian Public Space: How do Veiled Women Express their Presence and Interact in the Workplace?”

Siham Ouazzif conducted 16 in-depth interviews with Australian veiled women. They were well educated and held different professions from professors, psychologists, teachers to marketing managers.

A Companion to the Muslim World –

What is the extraordinary text that is the Quran – and how does it relate to the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad? How did a legacy so richly varied in faith, law and civilization emerge from the message of the Revelation that came to be called ‘Islam’ (or submission to God’s will)? This immaculately researched yet thoroughly accessible book offers a journey into the full range of experience – past and present, secular and sacred – of the diverse peoples and cultures of the Muslim world. Threads of continuity and change are woven through each chapter to make a coherent narrative covering a broad variety of themes and topics. Poets, cities and the architecture of mosques are as much a part of the exploration as multiple aspects of scripture, the status of women in the faith, and the emergence of a ‘digital community’ of believers. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, understanding what Islam is about and what Muslims believe is a vital concern across all frontiers. A Companion to the Muslim World is an attractive venture by distinguished scholars to contribute toward this urgent process of comprehension.

Global Jihad
Last Man Standing — jihadica

the golden age of Saudi Arabia as an exporter of pro-al-Qaida theological treatises is largely over. While I think the argument generally holds, Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil is now forcing me to qualify this claim.

So who is this person?

?????? ?? ????? Views from the Occident: American Jihadi Abu Mansur al-Ameriki (Amriki), in Somalia, Responds to U.S. President Barack Obama’s Cairo Speech

Late yesterday evening, a new audio message was posted on the main Salafi jihadi online discussion forums from Abu Mansur al-Ameriki (also spelled, Abu Mansur Amriki and Abu Mansoor Amriki), an American member and spokesman of sorts for the Somali radical group Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahidin [Movement of the Mujahidin-Youth] and its paramilitary wing, the Jaysh al-‘Usrah [Army of “Hardship”] which responds to U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent speech in Cairo that was aimed, supposedly, at the “Muslim world.” I posted segments from a panel discussion about the speech HERE. Very little is known about Abu Mansur, other than he speaks fluent English with some type of “American” accent. He also speaks, it seems, fluent Arabic. His response to Obama has been teased for the past week on the forums.

Islamic arbitration in the Netherlands

Would it be such a terrible thing if sharia courts existed in the Netherlands? Yes, says Nahed Selim, we have to stop giving in to the Islamic fundamentalists. No, says Maurits Berger, we already have Jewish and Catholic ‘courts’.

nrc.nl – International – Help Muslims escape the tyranny of sharia law

Sharia law in the Netherlands may not be practised in an actual ‘sharia court’, but that makes little difference. The point is that Islamic rules about marriage, divorce, custody, parental authority, alimony and inheritance are being implemented according to the sharia, and that these contradict Dutch law.
Nahed Selim is an interpreter and a writer. She is Dutch-Egyptian.

nrc.nl – International – Opinion – Let Muslims have their sharia courts

We will then be put before a choice: either the Muslims are allowed to do what other religions have been doing for centuries, or the entire system of parallel religious law must be dismantled.
Maurits Berger is a professor of Islam in the West at Leiden university.

Human Rights
Saudi Arabia: Shura Council Passes Domestic Worker Protections | Human Rights Watch

Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council passed a bill on July 8, 2009, to improve legal protections for the estimated 1.5 million domestic workers in the country, but the measure still falls short of international standards, Human Rights Watch said today. The bill goes from the Shura Council, an appointed consultative body, to the cabinet, which can make further changes before it is enacted into law.

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Closing the week 26

Posted on June 29th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer
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Featuring: Democracy & Blogosphere
Internet & Democracy project release study of the Arabic blogosphere | Berkman Center

“Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere” utilizes a unique methodology that blends link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs to investigate the online discussions taking place across the Middle East and North Africa. Internet & Democracy project director Bruce Etling and his team, with Morningside Analytics founder and Berkman affiliate John Kelly, and co-authors Robert Faris and John Palfrey, identified a base network of approximately 35,000 active blogs (about half as many as found in their previous study of the Persian blogosphere), created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs, and with a group of Arabic speakers hand coded 4,000 blogs. Congratulations and thanks to all who collaborated on this significant work!

The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs. Whereas the previous study of the Persian blogosphere revealed a network organized primarily around political ideologies and topical issues, such as reformist and conservative politics, religion, and poetry, the Arabic blogosphere is organized primarily around countries. Moreover, personal life and local issues are the most important topics of discussion: most bloggers write mainly personal, diary-style observations, but when writing about politics, bloggers tend to focus on issues within their own country. Bloggers link to Web 2.0 sites like YouTube and Wikipedia (English and Arabic versions) more than other sources of information and news available on the Internet. The overall picture is one of country-based groupings of blogs focused on domestic issues.

* To download the paper, including the full Key Findings, or to view the map of the Arabic blogosphere, visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/Mapping_the_Arabic_Blogosphere

Online Discourse in the Arab World: Dispelling the Myths | Berkman Center

The Internet & Democracy project will present the Berkman Center’s new research on the Arabic blogosphere, which analyzes over 10,000 blogs from 18 countries and which follows last year’s Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. The Arabic blogosphere findings will be discussed by an exceptional panel of speakers, with the online participation of bloggers from the Middle East.

Speakers

John Palfrey and Bruce Etling, Harvard University, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
John Kelly, Morningside Analytics
Daniel Brumberg, Georgetown University, Acting Director of USIP’s Muslim World Initiative
Saad Ibrahim, Voices for a Democratic Egypt
Raed Jarrar, Iraqi blogger, Raed in the Middle
Sheldon Himelfarb, United States Institute of Peace (Moderator)

Bloggers from throughout the Arab world will also participate live online and via video, including Raed Jarrar (Iraq), Nora Younis (Egypt), Laila El Haddad (Palestine), and Amira Al Hussaini (Bahrain).

Gender

What Not To Wear, Religious Edition: Supreme Court of Michigan Adopts Rule Allowing Judges to Exercise “Reasonable Control Over the Appearance of Parties and Witnesses” Based Upon Niqab Case « Feminist Law Professors

Of course, it could be argued that, unlike in these cases, judges have a compelling interest in having a witness remove a niqab because the finder of fact cannot observe the wearer’s face and determine her credibility.

There are at least two responses to this potential argument. The first is that the decision of the Michigan Supremes might still be out of line with precedent from across the country. Last December, the Fifth Circuit decided Boyd v. Texas, 2008 WL 5129645 (5th Cir. 2008). In Boyd, Karwana Boyd claimed that a trial judge in Texas’ Second Administrative District ordered her to leave his courtroom because she refused to remove a head scarf that she was wearing in observance of hijab. Boyd quickly sued the judge, and the Chief Judge of the District just as quickly sent a letter to all of the judges in the District

[…]

Second, the validity of the demeanor rationale is questionable. I direct readers to Aaron J. Williams excellent comment, The Veiled Truth: Can the Credibility of Testimony Given by a Niqab-Wearing Witness be Judged Without the Assistance of Facial Expressions?, 85 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 273 (2008), for a full and fair discussion of the issue.

-Colin Miller

Saudi Arabia: Drop ‘Cross-Dressing’ Charges | Human Rights Watch

The arrests of 67 men in Riyadh on June 13, 2009, reportedly for wearing women’s clothing, violate basic human rights to privacy and freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on Saudi authorities to drop charges against the men, most of them from other countries, and release any they are still holding.

“If the police in Saudi Arabia can arrest people simply because they don’t like their clothes, no one is safe,” said Rasha Moumneh, researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

The episode was reported by the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh on June 16 and corroborated by independent sources contacted by Human Rights Watch who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal. The newspaper reported that several men outside a private party, held in an east Riyadh neighborhood to celebrate the Philippines’ Independence Day, were arrested for what the police told them was “suspicious behavior” because they were wearing women’s clothing.

Terry » Archive » Talking to Someone Wearing a Headscarf: An Etiquette Guide

When you meet women who wear a headscarf and ask them to share their experiences, the similarities among them are striking. Regardless of their varied ages and cultural backgrounds, they have been subjected to the same abrupt questions and patronizing behaviour from others that is arguably an alien experience to the rest of society. Perhaps there is an etiquette guide circulating about, explaining to people exactly how this special individual- the Muslim woman they meet in their community, their workplace and at school ought to be treated. Such a guide must look something like this

Anthropology
Agency — Crooked Timber

I’m working on a co-authored paper on the notion of agency in Amartya Sen’s work. Agency as related to empowerment and autonomy, and not as an institution such as a real estate agent. Suddenly I recalled that when I was teaching on Sen in Louvain-la-Neuve two years ago, I was told that there is no word in French for ‘agency’. So now I am wondering: is this true? And if so, are there more languages that do not have a word for ‘agency’? (in fact, I even have a hard time to come up with an appropriate translation in Dutch). I checked it with an internet translator, which only translates it (for Dutch and French) as an institution, not as a property of human beings. Weird.

Ethnic and national identities: an anthropological outreach « media/anthropology

Let me start with one or two things we know about ethnic and national identity – but do please interrupt me if I ramble as I think aloud:

As a result of migration, intermarriage, war, interethnic contact, trade, mass schooling and a myriad other factors, a lot of people around the world today (in 2009) have a mixed ethnic, national and/or religious background. […]

Peoples, ethnic groups, nations, etc, have no ’soul’, no ‘essence’; this is just a Romantic fantasy – they have histories of sociopolitical change and continuity, linguistic and other cultural commonalities (as well as inner differences), but not souls or essences.

Although identity is not always as fluid or situated or blurred as many social theorists influenced by postmodernism wish it were, neither is it as fixed and certain as nationalists would like it to be. […]

Having multiple identities is not only perfectly possible, it can also be great fun. […]

Somatosphere: Just in time for your summer reading list: Annual Review of Anthropology

Those of you looking for yet more summer reading material in medical anthropology are in luck: the Annual Review of Anthropology has just released a number of articles from the forthcoming 2009 issue online in advance of its print publication in October. These include several reviews focused on issues of medicine and health. In fact, it look like this issue will have a sizable cluster of medicine-related reviews.

ethnosnacker: Breaking rules in the Middle East

How to make friends and influence people in our Dubai office: tell everyone that you are a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist video ethnographer.

“Marrying” anthropology and science

What does anthropology have to do with IT? Plenty, says Intel’s User Experience director, who believes her role helps make technology more accessible and user-friendly.

Iran
Iran: Halt the Crackdown | Human Rights Watch

The Iranian government should immediately end its nationwide crackdown on opposition activity, Human Rights Watch said today. The scale of the crackdown is apparent in the arrest of scores of reformist politicians, intellectuals, and journalists across Iran on June 17 and 18, together with violent attacks by police and state-sponsored militias against largely peaceful demonstrators, Human Rights Watch said

Arts & Culture
In Harmonium » Music, symbols and cross-cultural communication

If you listen to the two groups singing, you will note that each song (in the broad sense) “promises” (threatens?) what will happen to the other. Furthermore, each group acts out the promise inherent in their singing. The act of singing, by both groups, is not merely for moral, it is a statement of intent and an entrainment of a mind state. We see similar “statements” and entrainments in the current conflicts, although the “promise”, mind state and music are quite different.

Jihad
A Brief History of Jihadism in Turkey — jihadica

Despite the Istanbul attacks in 2003, the Turkish fight against terrorism has remained largely synonymous with the fight against Kurdish separatists. To my knowledge, there are few if any in-depth academic studies of Turkish jihadism. Not even the 2003 Istanbul attacks have been closely examined by scholars, despite a wealth of available Turkish sources. At most, there are studies of how the Turkish media covered these events, and the emphasis is on the narrative being used by non-jihadists to describe the phenomenon (see e.g. Gökhan Gökulu’s 2005 M.A. thesis “Terör Eylemlerinin Medyaya Yans?mas?”). With the exception of Mehmet Faraç’s book ?kiz Kulelerden Galata’ya: El Kaide Turka and the reporting of a few other journalists, Turkish writers and intellectuals seem surprisingly uninterested in the phenomenon itself. Although it has been thought that the secular Turks were almost immune to militant Islamism, the Turkish jihadist community appears to be growing.

Making Sense of Jihad: A Study of “Martyrs in a Time of Alienation” (XI)

In January 2008, Al-Fajr Media Center, an al-Qaida affiliated media group, released an extensive issue in its series, “Biographies of the Martyrs in the Land of Khorasan.” The book — in the summary translation used here — consists of 120 brief biographies of men who died in the insurgency against Coalition forces and regional governments. The following is a brief analysis (in green) of the book’s content based on a summary translation available through WNC (Dialog), see the “Introduction” post for record information.

Dutch
Moslim en lesbisch: Laïla liep weg van huis – Wel Jong Niet Hetero – Welkom bij de Vlaamse en Brusselse holebi-jongeren!!

Het borrelde al een hele tijd bij Laïla, een vlotte twintiger van Marokkaanse afkomst. De verwachtingen die haar ouders hadden, zou ze nooit kunnen inlossen. Zolang ze bij haar ouders woonde, zouden die verwachtingen er blijven, en de hoop dat hun rebelse dochter op een dag zou trouwen en kindjes krijgen. “Die kindjes mag je al schrappen, daar heb je een man voor nodig. En net dát wil ik niet!”, zegt Laïla overtuigd. “Ik wil iets van mijn leven maken en samen zijn met mijn vriendin.”

Daarom zocht ze een uitweg.

drogredenen.nl: Smalhout als pseudo-expert (18/6)

Smalhout beweert dat de twee auteurs vooraanstaande schrijvers en wetenschappers op het gebied van mensenrechten en de relaties tussen de joods-christelijke wereld en de islam zijn. Die bewering werd op het internet snel opgepikt en regelmatig keert deze kwalificatie terug. Maar kan Smalhout dat eigenlijk adequaat inschatten? Hij is medicus en beschikt niet over een expertise op het terrein van mensenrechten.

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Closing the week 25 – Featuring Iran

Posted on June 21st, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Closing the week 23

Posted on June 7th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Closing the week 22

Posted on May 31st, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

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Featured
Invisible Culture – An Electronic journal for Visual Culture: Interview with Benedict Anderson by Cynthia Foo (Open Access)

On October 1, 2008, Benedict Anderson presented a talk at Columbia University in which he discussed his upcoming book, a biography of the Chinese-Indonesian journalist Kwee Thiam Tjing. Having found a book of Kwee’s writings in a second-hand bookshop in Indonesia in 1962, Anderson describes his surprise that no one could identify the pseudonymous author, who wrote what Anderson considers to be “the greatest piece of prose written in the first half of the 20th century by anybody in Indonesia.” For years after Kwee’s death, Anderson explains, details of the journalist’s life and work were forgotten. It was only recently that Anderson was himself able to write about the author, in the process considering the role of cosmopolitanism in the life of the colonial subject.

And another interview can be found at Post-Colonial Studies:

In developing his theories, Anderson observes that the notion of “nation-ness” is, in the recent years, becoming a principal force in many aspects of modern thought. Both the rapid expansion of the United Nations, and the political unrest caused by conflict between and within “sub-nations” around the world (Imagined 3), are evidence that nationalism is, indeed, recognized as modern political moral hegemony.

Yet despite the influence that nationalism has had on modern society, Anderson finds the origins of the concept inadequately explained and recorded. His purpose in writing Imagined Communities is to provide a historical background for the emergence of nationalism — its development, evolution, and reception.

International (English)

anthropology
anthro:politico: Ritualized Consumption

What if “Western” rituals are based on having the power to consume? Advertisers and marketers have recognized the value of this idea for years. We’re forever hearing about the buying power of kids vs. tweens vs. teens and the strengths of those markets. Now ages are frequently marked by what consumer products are appropriate – for example, what’s the right age for your kid to get their first cell phone, and how is that determined by society-at-large?

Somatosphere: Teaching Anthropology of the Body

In hindsight, it seems much easier to work with the simple idea that all of our analytical frameworks are developed to respond to particular problematics, whether social, institutional, political, conceptual. This is something close to an anthropological cliché, but I think that it remains useful when thinking about how to organize knowledge in an area as rich as contemporary anthropological literature on the body.

Useful syllabi on virtual worlds and technology | Savage Minds

Random cruising around the IntarWeb today I tumbled over two interesting sources for syllabi on virtual worlds and the IntarWeb itself. First, Tom Boellstorff has syllabi on Culture in Virtual Worlds and Culture Power Cyberspace on his department website. You’ve read the ethnography, now vicariously take the course! Seriously, though, its great for Tom to share these syllabi—circulating syllabi is key to building community and scholarship about topics.

Also, as some of you may know, Polity Press has a series of small introductory readers on blogging, hacking etc. But there is more to it than just that—they have a website that looks like a sort of mini-online community, complete with blog and, yes, syllabi and reading resources.

Current Controversies: Ian Hacking | Forum

I am a conservative reactionary. I know that although my genetic inheritance constrains my possibilities of action and choice, I do not believe it is my essence or constitutes my identity. My question could be put: how long will it take before this attitude becomes extinct? We know that the genomic revolution will radically change the material conditions of life for soon-to-be-born generations. My question is: what will be the conception of self for those people soon to come?

CULCOM – Thomas Hylland Eriksen: The cartoon controversy and the possibility of cosmopolitanism

Let us suppose that secularised Danes were to take the religiosity of Muslims seriously and treat it with respect, much as they treat their old parents with respect. In that case, they would easily know how to maneuvre in order not to offend them. Not even trying to maneuvre indicates a strong inclination not to live in the same society even if one lives next door to each other. The kind of cosmopolitan attitude leading to restraint can be compared to the underlying reasoning behind the ban on smoking in public, which is these days being implemented in many parts of the world – but, ironically, not in Muslim countries! A Swede who lives part of the year in Cairo, part of the year in Göteborg, told me that in Göteborg he can have his beer any time anywhere, but he has to go outside to smoke; in Cairo it’s the other way around. The point is, however, that supposing I smoke and you do not, and we are in a room together, I might just tell you that if I smoke and you don’t, we both enjoy our liberal freedom. This is the problem of the cartoon controversy and the simplistic liberal responses to the offended reactions among Muslims. Muhammad cartoons to them are like tobacco smoke to an asthmatic.

Hat tip: Antropologi.info

antropologi.info – anthropology in the news blog – For an Anthropology of Cosmopolitanism

here some notes on anthropology and cosmopolitanism.

After the controversis around the Mohammed-cartoons, media loved talking about culture and religion wars and Huntingtons clash of civilisation. But maybe we should have talked more about cosmopolitanism than culture war. Isn’t cosmopolitanism more common than fundamentalism?

Research
FRA – European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

This EU-MIDIS report on Muslims provides data on how Muslims across the EU experience discrimination and victimisation. It covers Muslim respondents with diverse ethnic origins in 14 Member States.

Guernica / The Genocide Myth

The Genocide Myth
An interview with Mahmood Mamdani

In his latest book, Mamdani attacks the Save Darfur Coalition as ahistorical and dishonest, and argues that the conflict in Darfur is more about land, power, and the environment than it is directly about race.

“The Save Darfur movement claims to have learned from Rwanda,” writes Mahmood Mamdani in his new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. “But what is the lesson of Rwanda? For many of those mobilized to save Darfur, the lesson is to rescue before it is too late, to act before seeking to understand.” His book is an argument “against those who substitute moral certainty for knowledge, and who feel virtuous even when acting on the basis of total ignorance.” Americans think Darfur is a tragic genocide. Mamdani thinks the reality is more complex. His ideas should be taken seriously for a number of reasons, especially because he provides a road map to a workable peace settlement.

ICSR – The International Centre For The Study Of Radicalisation And Political Violence

Political extremists and terrorists are increasingly using the internet as an instrument for radicalisation and recruitment. What can be done to counter their activities? Countering Online Radicalisation examines the different technical options for making ‘radical’ internet content unavailable, concluding that they all are either crude, expensive or counter-productive.It sets out a new, innovative strategy which goes beyond ‘pulling the plug’, developing concrete proposals aimed at:

* Deterring the producers of extremist materials
* Empowering users to self-regulate their online communities
* Reducing the appeal of extremist messages through education
* Promoting positive messages

Countering Online Radicalisation results from the first systematic effort to bring together industry, experts and government on the issue of online radicalisation. Its insights and recommendations are certain to be of great interest to experts and policymakers around the world.

International Crisis Group – B92 Indonesia: Radicalisation of the “Palembang Gr

Indonesia has earned well-deserved praise for its handling of home-grown extremism, but the problem has not gone away. In April 2009, ten men involved in a jihadi group in Palembang, South Sumatra, were sent to prison on terrorism charges for killing a Christian teacher and planning more ambitious attacks. Their history provides an unusually detailed case study of radicalisation – the process by which law-abiding individuals become willing to use violence to achieve their goals. The sobering revelation from Palembang is how easy that transformation can be if the right ingredients are present: a core group of individuals, a charismatic leader, motivation and opportunity. Another ingredient, access to weapons, is important but not essential: the Palembang group carried out its first attack with a hammer and only later moved to making bombs.

[…]By contrast, funding was not a particularly important factor in radicalisation, nor was access to the internet. With the exception of the gun and a large donation of potassium chlorate for bomb-making, the group scraped together what it needed locally, and it was not much. The biggest expenses were round-trip bus tickets and a house rental at about $20 a month. All communication took place by mobile phone or through face-to-face meetings; there appears to have been almost no use of computers.

The 2009 Arab Public Opinion Poll: A View from the Middle East – Brookings Institution

Event Summary
As President Obama prepares to address the greater Muslim world from Egypt, understanding the mood and opinions of the Arab public is a critical challenge. As the people of the region respond to a wide range of dynamics—including American efforts to jump-start the Middle East peace process, stabilize Iraq and halt extremist gains in Pakistan and Afghanistan—accurately gauging Arab public opinion is vital.

Arab public opinion in 2009 | Marc Lynch

The key findings:

* Iraq was the single most important issue influencing Arab attitudes towards the Obama administration.
* Obama is personally inspiring some hope, but deep skepticism remains about U.S. foreign policy.
* Iran has lost ground with Arab public opinion but is not seen as much of a threat.
* Arabs prefer Hamas to Fatah, but want to see a Palestinian national unity government.
* The Syrian Embassy is likely tickled pink that Bashar al-Asad was the highest rated Arab leader in the question “which two world leaders outside your own country do you admire most.”

In my brief comments, I noted that we’re still a long way from having the kind of data necessary for Nate Silver-style 538.com analysis of these surveys, but there is more and more data out there to work with.

Paint by numbers – The National Newspaper

There has been a dramatic increase in recent years in the amount of polls conducted by Arab governments and NGOs – helping to correct the emphasis of the first wave of post-September 11 surveys carried out by American organisations, which were overwhelmingly narcissistic: How do Arabs feel about America? About American policies? About American leaders? In short, how do Arabs feel about the issues Americans care about? These polls produced results, but without any sense of how much the issues really mattered to the people being surveyed. For instance, survey research has consistently found that economic and quality of life issues – rather than American policies or politics – are foremost among Arab concerns.

Opinion research that explores deeper cultural matters and local political issues will be far more useful than news-making surveys about anti-Americanism. Mark Tessler, who heads the Arab Barometer project – and is the leading American academic working on Arab public opinion – argues that efforts should be directed toward “explanation rather than descriptions” in order to assemble a complex picture about attitudes and their causes rather than bullet-point numbers.

“FIFTY PER CENT ARABS HOPEFUL ABOUT OBAMA” is fine for headline writers, but it is far less important than acquiring a sense of why they are hopeful, or about what would vindicate, or dash, their hopes.

Thoughts on religious (Islamic) revival
Free market faith | New Humanist

Free market faith
Globalisation is leading to more belief, not less. Caspar Melville talks to the editor of The Economist about his new book tracing the rise and rise of religion

New Statesman – God Is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Is Changing the World

Contrary to what evangelical rationalists preach, it is perfectly possible both to be modern and to believe in God. But there is no reason to assume that the American religious model will prevail

From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy by Kenan Malik – Times Online

Alarmed by race riots in the 1980s, local and national government in Britain embarked on a multicultural strategy. Respect was to be accorded to different ways of life and, fatally, these ways of life were to be classified as communities with their own “community leaders”.

In a way, it worked. Racism did, indeed, decline. But the price was high. The creation of “communities” replaced racism with tribalism and, in 2005, tribal riots between blacks and Asians broke out in Birmingham. These riots were caused by multiculturalism. Before the council told them they were members of a “community”, they were just people living together in the same place. “Hostility,” writes Kenan Malik, “is not in the blood of Asians or African-Caribbeans. It is in the DNA of multicultural policies.”

[…]

From Fatwa to Jihad tells, for the most part brilliantly, this baleful tale. Malik is well-placed to do so. He was born in India and came to Britain at the age of five. His mother was Hindu and his father Muslim, but he did not have a religious upbringing. Racism, not religion, formed his early radicalism as it did that of many non-whites in this country.

Commonweal – A review of religion, politics and culture

Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God? Who would have expected theology to rear its head once more in the technocratic twenty-first century, almost as surprisingly as some mass revival of Zoroastrianism? Why is it that my local bookshop has suddenly sprouted a section labeled “Atheism,” hosting anti-God manifestos by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others, and might even now be contemplating another marked “Congenital Skeptic with Mild Baptist Leanings”? Why, just as we were confidently moving into a posttheological, postmetaphysical, even posthistorical era, has the God question broken out anew?

Thierry Chervel: Submission in advance – signandsight

At the high point of the dispute over the cartoons, the Dutch politicican Ayaan Hirsi Ali came to Berlin, of all places, to give a speech defending the rights of the cartoonists. She herself pointed out the connection between the two totalitarianisms. As a dissident Muslim, she used the example of Eastern European dissidence which was rewarded with the collapse of the Wall. But her gesture was not understood. Essentially, what happened to her was worse than what had happened to Rushdie, who was at least defended and protected. In 2004 a young extremist named Bouyeri assassinated the filmmaker Theo van Gogh who, together with Hirsi Ali, had made the film “Submission”. Bouyeri thrust a dagger into van Gogh’s chest, to which was attached a note: “I know, oh Ayaan Hirsi Ali, that you shall go under / I know, oh fundamentalists of unbelief, that you shall go down.” These words got around.

Writers like Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash took them up and amplified them, half-consciously, half-unconsciously, equating the “fundamentalists of the Enlightenment” with Islamic fundamentalists. Garton Ash later recanted. What remained was the insistence by Hirsi Ali’s opponents that her activities were useless, that her intransigence was itself driving Muslims into a corner, that her denial of the faith meant she represented nothing and thus was unable to contribute to the integration of Muslims into Western society. Tariq Ramadan was the man to listen to, they said. Hirsi Ali was threatened with losing her Dutch citizenship. She left for the United States whereupon the Dutch government stopped paying for her security. Cassandra doesn’t live here anymore. God is great.

The European Left cried no tears for her. She had long been decried as a useful idiot of reactionary forces. In a striking parallel to the fate of many ex-Communist dissidents, Hirsi Ali found no home on the Left. Rushdie, too, had to admit that he had been mistaken. In his “Satanic Verses” he had declared that the war on racism in Britain, on Hindu nationalism in India, on Islamism, was part of the Left’s greater purpose. But he was doubly mistaken: Islamism has a universalist thrust which makes it more dangerous than mere xenophobia. Yet the Left prefers battling Islamic dissidents to fighting Islamism.

One World, Under God – The Atlantic (April 2009)

For all the advances and wonders of our global era, Christians, Jews, and Muslims seem ever more locked in mortal combat. But history suggests a happier outcome for the Peoples of the Book. As technological evolution has brought communities, nations, and faiths into closer contact, it is the prophets of tolerance and love that have prospered, along with the religions they represent. Is globalization, in fact, God’s will?

Heirs to Fortuyn? – WSJ.com

For much of the American left, Western Europe was nothing less than an abstract symbol of progressive utopia.
[City Journal]

This rosy view was never accurate, of course. Europe’s socialized health care was blighted by outrageous (and sometimes deadly) waiting lists and rationing, to name just one example.

[…]Deborah Scroggins wrote in The Nation in 2005 that “Muslims make up only 5.5 percent of the Dutch population, but they account for more than half the women in battered women’s shelters.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch advocate for democracy and women’s rights, would no doubt say far more than half: When she was working with women in Dutch shelters, she writes, “there were hardly any white women” in them, “only women from Morocco, from Turkey, from Afghanistan—Muslim countries—alongside some Hindu women from Surinam.” When she and filmmaker Theo van Gogh tried to highlight the mistreatment of women under Islam in the 2004 film “Submission: Part I,” he was killed by a young Muslim extremist.

[…]Yet despite these disavowals, American media have routinely echoed the leftist establishment’s unjust calumnies.

A seminal example was a March 2002 New York Times article by Marlise Simons about Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who, according to the article’s headline, was “Proudly Gay, and Marching the Dutch to the Right.” Though Ms. Simons acknowledged that Fortuyn criticized Islam because it offered “no equality for men and women and because . . . the imams here preach in offensive terms about gays,” she nonetheless echoed the Dutch establishment’s characterization of him as a menace to Dutch values, making sure to mention that he had been widely compared with Mussolini and Haider. A few weeks later, Fortuyn was murdered by an environmental fanatic taken in by similar claptrap.

[…]

Who will win the war for the soul of Western Europe? The Islamofascists and their multiculturalist appeasers, many of whom seem to believe that their job is not to defend democracy but to help make the transition to Shariah as smooth as possible? The nativist cryptofascists? Or Pim Fortuyn’s freedom-loving heirs? Interestingly, while Western Europeans have been heading in one direction, Americans have chosen to go the other way, replacing a president more loathed by the European elite than any in history with a man whom the same elite has celebrated to an unprecedented degree, often depicting his election as a mystical act of atonement for all of America’s past sins, real or imagined.

The final question, then, is whether the Western European left’s condescension toward America, and the American left’s habit of holding Western Europe up as a socialist paradise, can survive the combination of Europe’s right turn and the elevation of Barack Obama.

Mr. Bawer is the author of the upcoming “Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom.” He blogs at brucebawer.com.

Roxana Saberi
Full transcript of NPR News interview with Roxana Saberi | INFORUM | Fargo, ND

MS. BLOCK: I interviewed your father back in April, while you were still in prison, and he told me that you had made statements under pressure – under threat – while you were being held in Evin prison. Was that the case, and if that was the case, what did you confess to under duress?

MS. SABERI: That was the case. As has been seen in the past, one of the ways that people get out of these kinds of situations is to make a confession, and even be videotaped making this confession, even if this confession is false. And so, under pressure, I did the same thing. After I realized that nobody knew where I was, I was very afraid, and my interrogators threatened me and said, if you don’t confess to being a U.S. spy, you could be here for many years – 10 years or 20 years, or you could even face execution.

And I thought, well, if something happens to me, my family doesn’t know where I am, maybe they would never find out. And so I made a false confession and I said yes, I’m a U.S. spy. But because my conscience got the better of me and the god that I believe in – the god that I thought had abandoned me when I was first imprisoned – I realized, was always with me. And I realized that he was not pleased with what I had done by making this false confession. I recanted my confession, knowing full well that I would jeopardize my freedom.

And indeed, that’s what happened

Misc.
Israel moves closer to banning mourning of its independence – Haaretz – Israel News

Israel moves closer to banning mourning of its independence
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Israeli Arabs

Public commemoration of Israel’s independence as a day of mourning could become a crime subject to prison penalty, should a bill approved on Sunday by a ministerial panel be brought to the Knesset and cabinet for vote.

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday approved a preliminary proposal which would make it illegal to hold events or ceremonies marking Israel’s Independence Day as a “nakba,” or catastrophe.

Rather than holding barbecues and parades on Independence Day, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians usually take the day to commemorate the dispersal of Palestinians during the 1948 War of Independence.

An unusual couple, an unlikely marriage – The Globe and Mail

An unusual couple, an unlikely marriage

Young groom’s passion for researching terrorism brought him into the Khadr family

From Friday’s Globe and Mail, Saturday, May. 23, 2009

They are among the most unusual of couples. Joshua Boyle, 25, is the son of a tax judge whose empty home was shot up. Zaynab Khadr, 29, is the sister of Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr – and Osama bin Laden attended her first wedding in Afghanistan a decade ago.

The divorced single mom and the research fanatic met over the Internet – their mutual interests in Wikipedia and the war on terror helping them stake out common ground. This year they married – quietly – but their romance was propelled into the public eye after thieves fired several .22-calibre bullets into the groom’s family home.

Now, they talk about their marriage, the break-in and overcoming prejudice – including a suspicion that Mr. Boyle is a spy. A rally outside an abortion clinic, they said, also helped bring them together.

Detainee Who Gave False Iraq Data Dies In Prison in Libya – washingtonpost.com

Detainee Who Gave False Iraq Data Dies In Prison in Libya

A former CIA high-value detainee, who provided bogus information that was cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, has died in a Libyan prison, an apparent suicide, according to a Libyan newspaper.

A researcher for Human Rights Watch, who met Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli late last month, said a contact in Libya had confirmed the death.

Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration. He became the unnamed source, according to Senate investigators, behind Bush administration claims in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda operatives. The claim was most famously delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his address to the United Nations in February 2003.

Dutch International
Dutch liberal leader: Holocaust denial should not be a crime – Haaretz – Israel News

Dutch liberal leader: Holocaust denial should not be a crime
By Cnaan Liphshiz

A proposal to decriminalize Holocaust denial in the Netherlands by the leader of the Dutch liberal party touched off controversy in the party on Wednesday and drew criticism from prominent Jewish figures and from the political establishment.

Dutch-Jewish poet masks Israeli roots to win Arab prize – Haaretz – Israel News

Dutch-Jewish poet masks Israeli roots to win Arab prize
By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent

One name sticks out from the list of winners in the prestigious El Hizjra poetry competition intended for Dutch Arabs, which was announced two weeks ago – Tuvit Shlomi, press officer for Holland’s largest Zionist group.

Dutch firebrand aims to bring down European parliament | My Sinchew

Wilders faces a trial at home for his anti-Islam utterings and was recently barred from entering Britain to stop him spreading “hatred and violent messages,” particulary in his movie “Fitna” in which he said Islam was fascist.

But he is at the height of its popularity at home and the PVV hopes to take up to four of the 25 Dutch seats in the 736 member EU assembly, despite advocating its demise.

He declared in a recent newspaper interview that he wants “to bring it down from inside.”

“Wilders holds up Europe, Islam and immigration as evils,” political analyst Alfred Pijpers said, recalling how Dutch voters rejected a proposed European constitution in a 2005 referendum.

Dutch
‘In islam is niet alles zo zwart-wit als in de Koran’ – Roosendaal – Regio – bndestem

Is een islamitische slager een ander soort ondernemer dan een katholieke slager?

Voor het antwoord op die vraag heeft Gerard de Winter uit Roosendaal een boek geschreven: ‘Maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen vanuit een islamitisch perspectief’. Het boek is het resultaat van een onderzoek van De Winter in het kader van zijn studie Religiewetenschappen aan de Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen. “Ik ben die studie begonnen uit nieuwsgierigheid naar de invloed van religie op mens en maatschappij. Tegelijkertijd houd ik me in mijn werk als marketing-adviseur bezig met maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen. Die twee dingen heb ik in mijn onderzoek samengebracht en dan toegespitst op de invloed van de islam. Ook om eens op een andere manier een duit in het zakje te doen over al die discussies over de islam.”
Zie ook:
* ‘Als moslim verkoop ik geen drank’

Nieuwwij.nl: De boeddhaïsering van Nederland

Theo Salemink is universitair docent Geschiedenis van kerk en maatschappij in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw aan de Universiteit van Tilburg. Samen met Marcel Poorthuis schreef hij Lotus in de Lage Landen. De geschiedenis van het Boeddhisme in Nederland. Beeldvorming van 1840 tot heden. Ze kregen voor dit boek de Gouden erepenning van het Teylers Godgeleerd Genootschap 2009.

Door: Fatiha Bazi

Uw boek Lotus in de Lage Landen laat een kleurrijk overzicht zien van hoe het boeddhisme vanaf de negentiende eeuw voet aan wal krijgt in Nederland. Kunt u kort vertellen hoe het beeld van Boeddha door de jaren heen is veranderd?

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Closing the week 21

Posted on May 24th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer
Most popular on this site during the last week:

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International (English)

Research
The virginity fetish | Salon Life

The virginity fetish

Why is our culture so obsessed with girls’ chastity? Author Jessica Valenti talks about how purity balls and “barely legal” porn both feed the same idea: That a woman’s worth is between her legs.

By Tracy Clark-Flory

Ghodsee, K.: Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria.

Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe examines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion.

Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region’s state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women’s embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks’ new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria’s Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.

Kristen Ghodsee is associate professor of gender and women’s studies at Bowdoin College. She is the author of The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. You can listen to her public lecture Headscarves and Hotpants: Islam, Secularism and Women’s Fashion in Southeastern Europe HERE.

Springer Science+Business Media : News

Children’s moral behavior and attitudes in the real world largely carry over to the virtual world of computers, the Internet, video games and cell phones. Interestingly, there are marked gender and race differences in the way children rate morally questionable virtual behaviors, according to Professor Linda Jackson and her team from Michigan State University in the US. Their research1 is the first systematic investigation of the effects of gender and race on children’s beliefs about moral behavior, both in the virtual world and the real world, and the relationship between the two. The study was published online in Springer’s journal, Sex Roles.

Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation: Part 3 « Nuseiba

So consumer capitalism has adapted the most challenging propositions of the Other’s culture and reconstituted it as an empty, fashion shell. But since Dick Hebdidge in Subculture, the Meaning of Style in 1979 it was clear that contemporary audiences use and can subvert mass culture for their ends. Representations can be excorporated into the marginal. The oppressed have always resisted, have ‘poached’ on the domains of the powerful and reworked the dominant culture for their own ends. Popular culture (rather than mass) is always a culture of conflict, it always involves the struggle to make social meanings that are in the interests of the subordinate and that are not those preferred by the dominant ideology. Popular culture is the culture of the subordinate who resent their subordination.

Rethinking Jihad 2009 Conference

The Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), led by Dr Elisabeth Kendall, is holding an international conference to unravel and re-construct the concept of jihad in all its aspects. The conference will seek to improve our understanding of ‘jihad’ through the work of highly qualified academics and intellectuals who aim to free ‘jihad’ from the stereotyping currently exploited to serve violence, oppression and media sensationalism. In addition to securing the agreement of several leading international intellectuals to give keynote addresses during the course of the three day conference, well over 100 academics and intellectuals, keen to explore the thorny issue of ‘jihad’, responded to our call for papers. This scale of response indicates both the need and the will to discuss jihad in all its aspects as a crucial yet misunderstood concept in today’s society.

Conference Rationale and Description

Much like ‘fatwa’ the term ‘jihad’ has come to be used as a byword for fanaticism and Islam’s implacable hostility toward the West. But like other religious and political concepts, jihad has multiple resonances and associations, its meaning shifting over time and varying from place to place. Jihad has referred to movements of internal reform, spiritual struggle, and self-defence as much as, if not more than, to ‘holy war’. Jihad, moreover, reflects principles and concerns by no means unique to Islam. Among Muslim intellectuals, as well as others concerned with the Arab and Islamic worlds, the meaning and significance of jihad remains subject to debate and controversy. Too often the diversity and sophistication of debate in the region, as well as scholarship on the religion, politics and history of the Arab and Islamic worlds stands in stark contrast to the crude generalisations found in the media.

To address the problems of simplification and essentialisation that characterise much current discourse on Islam and the Arab world, particularly when it comes to conceptions of jihad as evidence of a peculiarly Islamic predilection for violence and warfare, the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) is convening a major international conference on ‘re-thinking’ jihad. The conference brings together academics from around the world to shed light on some of jihad’s manifold dimensions, enactments and interpretations. It will include keynote addresses from leading experts on Middle Eastern and Islamic history, politics, theology and society. These accomplished speakers will address, and put into context, broad issues pertinent to the subject of jihad. The keynote addresses will be interspersed with panel discussions that will examine specific themes in more detail. The panels will showcase cutting-edge research on the topic of jihad by scholars from across five continents.

Western feminists don’t understand Muslim Women

Historically, calls for liberation have often created circumstances that are worse for women. Oxfam released a study earlier this year reporting that Iraqi women’s conditions have qualitatively deteriorated since the U.S. invasion. While I’m sure this wasn’t in the grand feminist plan for Iraqi women, the reality is that sweeping numbers of them are widowed, unemployed, and subject to brutalities at the hands of sectarian gangs and occupying forces.

Non-Muslim feminist misunderstandings don’t just affect women in predominately Muslim countries. They affect Muslim women living in the West, too. When France proposed a ban on religious symbols in schools, specifically targeting the hijab, French feminists were completely onboard, dismissing the hijab as a symbol of oppression that no Muslim girl would wear willingly. But the ban has systematically denied schooling to girls who wear hijab. Demanding a girl choose between her school and her traditions is a surefire way to keep her down. Many girls choose the latter.

The truth is, many feminist Muslim organizations are already hard at work.

Gender & Religion
Maghreb Arabe Presse: Mourchidates, pioneering experience in the region

Mourchidates, pioneering experience in the region
Washington – Participants in a meeting on “Our Families, Our Faiths, & Our Futures,” held, here Wednesday, hailed the experience of Moroccan women religious councilors, known as Mourchidates, describing the initiative as a unique and pioneering experience in the region.

Folio » Cup of tea?

Yes, and as I remembered that our blessed Prophet, peace be upon him, mended his own clothes, a habit that even the most enlightened Westerner would still consider women’s work. A poor husband feels oppressed because a wife will not respond with a cup of tea when he asks for one. For crying out loud, man, do it yourself. And while you’re at it, offer to make her one too.

Rotterdam to prevent forced marriage < | Expatica The Netherlands

Girls who are concerned they may be forced into an arranged marriage can express their concerns with the school. Before they go away, the girls can sign a contract stating they do not want to marry.

If the girls fail to return at the end of the summer, the Dutch police will be notified immediately.

Religion & Politics
World Bulletin [ Myanmar-expelled Rohingya Muslims move to Bangladesh ]

Myanmar-expelled Rohingya Muslims move to Bangladesh
Local residents said about 1,000 Rohingya Muslims entered Bangladesh in just the past three days, saying increased persecution by Myanmar’s military junta.

German Muslim community split over co-ed swimming classes | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 21.05.2009

A court in the western city of Muenster has ruled that Muslim girls at elementary schools in Germany must attend mixed swimming classes with boys, rejecting a request from the parents of a nine-year-old girl for her to be excused from the lessons.

The parents from the industrial city of Gelsenkirchen told the school authorities that they lived strictly to the teachings of the Koran, adding that they found mixed swimming “immoral”.

“Protective” suit

The administrative court said, however, that the girl could protect her modesty by wearing a full-length bathing suit dubbed a “burkini.”

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Legal limbo for Tajik Islamic brides

[…]he is not obliged to pay her any alimony or child support because her marriage, like many in Tajikistan, was conducted according to Islamic rites and was never officially registered.

It is estimated that up to 30% of all marriages in Tajikistan are unregistered.

You hardly ever see one, but the veil debate is back

You hardly ever see one, but the veil debate is back
Quebecers harbour strong emotions about women who wear the veil
JANET BAGNALL, The Gazette

In fact, a person in Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States could go an entire lifetime without seeing a Muslim woman whose face is covered with a veil. Yet the right to wear a veil – or not – this year alone has been the subject of court cases in Canada and the U.S. and heated controversy elsewhere.

Religion & Popular Culture
TheStar.com | World | Islamic Idol lets pop fans keep the faith

Flames burst from the stage for a grand entrance, and fake fog swirls around a young man in a white robe. He clutches the microphone, gazes seriously into the camera and then, accompanied only by drums, he sings.

“I accept Allah as my God, His religion as my religion, and His messenger as my messenger,” he intones, as the audience, divided into men’s and women’s sections, claps along with the rhythm.

The singer is a contestant on a new Islamic version of American Idol, launched to promote and drum up talent for the Arab world’s first Islamic pop music video channel.

Blogosphere
The Carnival is Here: White Privilege and The Ummah « Rolling Ruminations

My intention behind this carnival, for the sake of Allah of course, was to initiate some dialogue about race related issues within the Ummah focusing specifically on white Muslim privilege. Problems stemming from racism, nationalism and privilege within the Ummah are not a secret, except maybe to new converts or newly transplanted Muslims, but in my experience I have only seen very, very little talk about these problems coming from white Muslims–and mostly is has revolved around implicating others. So, inshAllah, I hope that this carnival may be a starting point for white Muslims to begin self-critical affirmative efforts to better ourselves–because that is what we are supposed to do, for the sake of Allah.

Saudi Arabia to Regulate Kingdom-Based Websites Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Minister of Culture and Information, Dr. Abdulaziz Khoja revealed Saudi Arabia’s intention to enact laws, regulation, and legislation for newspapers and internet websites. The most important of the proposed legislation is for websites to require official licenses to be granted by a special agency under the purview of the Ministry of Information.

Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Is In Production!

Stephen Wolfram reminded us of his vision:

Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer. I’m happy to say that we’ve successfully built a system that delivers knowledge from a simple input field, giving access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms. Wolfram|Alpha signals a new paradigm for using computers and the Web.

Dutch
AD.nl – Binnenland – Bos roept Wilders op tot debat

Bos roept Wilders op tot debat
HILVERSUM – PvdA-leider Wouter Bos wil graag met PVV-leider Geert Wilders in debat. Volgens Bos ontwijkt Wilders het debat.

AD.nl – Rotterdam – ‘Allochtonen: ga massaal stemmen!’

‘Allochtonen: ga massaal stemmen!’
Door ABDEL ILAH RUBIO
ROTTERDAM – De deelname van Geert Wilders aan de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen in Rotterdam zal tot een recordopkomst onder allochtone kiezers leiden.

Dat is de verwachting van verschillende migrantenorganisaties, die een grote campagne voorbereiden om zoveel mogelijk gekleurde Rotterdammers naar de stembus te lokken.

Nederlands Dagblad – Bolkestein: moslims geen recht op eigen scholen

,,Wij leven in een gelijkheidscultuur. Maar mensen zijn ongelijk. En godsdiensten ook.” Dat zegt VVD-prominent Frits Bolkestein zaterdag in een interview met het Nederlands Dagblad.

Volgens de liberaal is de vrijheid van onderwijs door jarenlange schoolstrijd nauw verweven met de Nederlandse samenleving. ,,Er is geen enkele reden om dat recht ook aan andere scholen zoals islamitische te gunnen.”

Regelzucht » Onze trotse moslims

Logisch dus, dat vooral migranten trots zijn op Groot-Brittannië, Duitsland en Nederland. Ze hebben er gewoon meer redenen voor. Het is even wennen voor Verdonk, maar daarna wil ze vast niets anders meer. Het verschil met de PVV is voor altijd duidelijk! Deze blije multiculti-praat wordt echter door twee uitkomsten van het Gallup-onderzoek pijnlijk doorkruist: negentig procent van de Britse moslims voelt zich niet geïntegreerd (Daily mail 8 mei) – je kunt blijkbaar wel trots maar toch niet thuis zijn. Daarnaast vindt niemand van de ondervraagde Britse Moslims homoseksualiteit moreel toelaatbaar. Dat laatst is koren op de molen van Wilders. Onmogelijk voor Verdonk om moslims in haar armen te sluiten.

Hoewel: het is maar waar je het mee vergelijkt. De Britse bevolking als geheel is ook erg homofoob. Meer dan de helft van de Britten vindt homoseksualiteit moreel ontoelaatbaar. In Nederland ligt dit heel anders. Slechts 11 procent van onze bevolking staat negatief tegenover homoseksualiteit (SCP 2006), tegenover de helft van de Nederlandse Moslims. Onze Moslims zijn ook in dit opzicht behoorlijk Nederlands: ze zijn positiever over homoseksualiteit dan de autochtone Britten.

Niet te snel juichen: nog steeds kunnen veel docenten tegenover Nederlandse moslims niet voor hun homoseksualiteit uitkomen. Maar toch is dit een opsteker voor al die politici, docenten, homo-organisaties, kunstenaars en wie niet al die de afgelopen jaren hun nek uitgestoken hebben om dit onderwerp onder de aandacht te brengen: zie hier hun succes.

‘Trots op Nederland?’, zou ik als nieuwe Nederlander zeggen: ‘Dat kunnen wij beter! Als we soms een inburgeringcursus moeten geven?’

Plan godslastering van tafel – DePers.nl

Het kabinet heeft zich vanochtend opnieuw gebogen over de verboden op godslastering en groepsbelediging. Volgens twee bronnen rond het kabinet zou minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin van Justitie (CDA) vanochtend voorstellen om godslastering toch strafbaar te laten. Hij zou dan geen uitbreiding van het beledigingsverbod meer willen.

Joods Actueel » Franse auteur “ontmaskert” Tariq Ramadan in nieuw boek

Ik ben inderdaad gay en feministe maar ook antiracist, ecologist… Vooral die twee laatste hebben mij gedreven om negen maanden lang te werken op die voordrachten en cassettes om eens en voor goed uit te maken of hij nu inderdaad een dubbel discours hanteert.

Tijdens deze enquêtes heb ik dikwijls zitten twijfelen, maar vandaag is mijn intieme overtuiging gevestigd en gestaafd door bewijzen: Tariq Ramadan is geen modernist maar een predikant die een modern en intellectueel discours gebruikt om een retrograde en onverdraagzame politieke islam te promoten.

Voor al wat dienen kan wil ik nog even preciseren dat ik naast mijn job van journaliste ook nog les geef bij Sciene-Po Paris, en dat de retoriek van Ramadan mij boeit omwille van haar complexiteit en ontzagwekkende handigheid.

Opzet van mijn boek is daarom het ontrafelen en niet het vereenvoudigen van die complexiteit. Wie het gelezen heeft zal daarvan oprecht kunnen getuigen. Het boek is nu beschikbaar in het Engels zodat iedereen er zich een opinie kan over vormen. Ik wel enkel nog preciseren dat in tegenstelling met wat Ramadan beweert, alle citaten uiteraard volledig juist zijn en steeds hun bron vermelden. Hij heeft mij trouwens nooit een proces aangedaan noch kunnen bewijzen dat één enkele van de aangehaalde citaten al was het maar verdraaid zou zijn.

Zijn belangrijkste tactiek bestaat uit een abstracte kritiek op mijn boek om daarna over te gaan tot algemeenheden waarbij hij valse citaten aanhaalt (die niet uit mijn boek of van mij komen) om ze schijnbaar te kunnen weerleggen. Zodoende kan hij wat tijd winnen, vooraleer de waarheid, zoals altijd, hem achterhaald.

De auteur is een Franse schrijfster, journaliste en redactrice van het tijdschrift Prochoix. Ze publiceerde in 2004 een grondige studie van de opvattingen van Tariq Ramadan onder de titel ‘Frère Tariq’ (Grasset) en in 2005 het boek ‘La tentation obscurantiste’ (Grasset).

Gouda zwijgt over agressie – Binnenland – Telegraaf.nl [24 uur actueel, ook mobiel] [binnenland]

Goudse beleidsmakers zwijgen over agressie
door Jenny van der Zijden
GOUDA, dinsdag – Goudse politieke partijen, politie, gemeente en andere instanties duiken massaal weg wanneer hen wordt gevraagd naar een mening over de Marokkanenproblematiek in deze stad. Jan Stikvoort, korpschef van politie Hollands Midden was gisteren zelfs helemaal niet bereikbaar voor commentaar omdat hij op werkbezoek is bij de politie in Polen.

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Closing the week 20

Posted on May 18th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer
Most popular this week: Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics
Also ‘hot’: Dar al ‘Ilm – Het nationale Islam Congres (a report – in Dutch – will appear on Closer by Monday)

International (English)

Religion & Politics
‘I was groomed for jihad in Britain’ -Times Online

‘I was groomed for jihad in Britain’
A Muslim teenager in London gives the first inside account of how extremists are luring recruits
Kevin Dowling

A TEENAGER has revealed how he was recruited by Al-Qaeda-inspired extremists and groomed to carry out suicide attacks in Britain.

In the first insider account of how radicals are preying on vulnerable Muslim youths, the teenager describes being approached by Islamists at a mosque in south London that was used by the failed 21/7 bombers, and indoctrinated at a secret network of squats.

A Woman in the Muslim Brotherhood | Jacksonville.com

A Woman in the Muslim Brotherhood
T. Nicole Hernandez

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would give more freedom for all aspects of Egyptian society, including women, if the movement achieved power in the country, a female member of the group said.

Happy Daggers: “Middle of what? Middle to whom?” – Nawal El Saadawi

The renowned Egyptian writer, doctor and activist Nawal El Saadawi is currently promoting the English translations of her most famous writings, reissued by Zed Books publisher. As a consequence, she is meeting her readers in diverse places – libraries, universities, etc. – engaging with them a very stimulating dialogue that takes an Arab perspective on political issues related to cultural, social and sexual prejudices. Born in 1931, El Saadawi is just as you could imagine her: radical, impressive but still very nice, attentive to her readers’ feedback and willing to understand different views from hers – at least, to a certain extent. Despite her stubbornness, the 78 year-old lady missed neither eloquence nor sense of humor. I met her at Housman’s, a radical bookshop in London.

Gender

An unseen burqa revolution | csmonitor.com

Every year brings progress for women’s rights in Muslim nations, though the advances are often obscured by smoke from explosive news reports suggesting the opposite.

It’s so hard to find obedient girls these days… | open Democracy News Analysis

I tried to maintain my shock and just nodded; but I was quietly realizing here was patriarchy in action – what drove a woman to raise a son who values subservience and insecurity in a wife? What did it say about her own beliefs in her own power?

“Muslims Talking Sex” Series: Much Ado About Nothing- the Hymen « GOATMILK: An intellectual playground edited by Wajahat Ali

GOATMILK introduces its original and exclusive month long series entitled “Muslims Talking Sex” featuring diverse Muslim writers from around the world discussing a gamut of topics in their own unique, honest and eclectic voices.

Commercialization of Islam
Halal: Buying Muslim – TIME

One reason for the rise of the halal economy is that the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are younger and, in some places at least, richer than ever. Seeking to tap that huge market, non-Muslim multinationals like Tesco, McDonald’s and Nestlé have expanded their Muslim-friendly offerings and now control an estimated 90% of the global halal market.

At the same time, governments in Asia and the Middle East are pouring millions into efforts to become regional “halal hubs,” providing tailor-made manufacturing centers and “halal logistics” — systems to maintain product purity during shipping and storage. The increased competition is changing manufacturing and supply chains in some unusual places. Most of Saudi Arabia’s chicken is raised in Brazil, which means Brazilian suppliers have built elaborate halal slaughtering facilities. Abattoirs in New Zealand, the world’s biggest exporter of halal lamb, have hosted delegations from Iran and Malaysia. And the Netherlands, keen to maximize Rotterdam’s role as Europe’s biggest port, has built halal warehouses so that imported halal goods aren’t stored next to pork or alcohol.

Research
Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation « Nuseiba

Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation
May 10, 2009

Portrayals of the ‘Other’ in Fine Art and Mass Media

Farah

This is the first in a 3-part series discussing the portrayal of the ‘Other’ through Western cultural artefacts. In this post I will establish the theoretical framework, and discuss the role of the Orient in fine art during the first wave of colonialism in the late 1800’s.

Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation: Part 2 « Nuseiba

How did the high art Oriental depictions of harems, turbans, hyper-sexualised women in transparent veils and sheiks make its way into mass culture?

[Note to myself and my readers…yes again a quote from Nuseiba. If they keep on going like this I have no other option left than calling Nuseiba my favorite blog of the moment]
Defying the Integration Models – the Second Generation in Europe: European Science Foundation

In Germany there is hardly any upcoming elite, but there are also fewer pupils dropping out of school, and more help with the transition to the labour market. But the Netherlands has also seen – along with the emergence of an elite – the growth of an at-risk group, of school dropouts who may be unemployed, or only intermittently employed, and in social housing.

“If you look to the future, the question is this: is the steady rise in social mobility in German-speaking countries, from the low-class position of their parents to the lower middle-class, skilled position, the safe route to integration? Or looking at France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium, where there is a developing elite, will that speed up the integration process? Or is there in these countries a group at the bottom that will cause so many problems that integration will spiral negatively?”

Hezbollah Deals with “Shia Salafism” in Lebanon «

While ”Salafism” is usually associated with Sunni Islam, it is applicable here in the sense that “Salafi,” as understood in contemporary Islamism, essentially describes a more dogmatic approach to dealing with society compared to pragmatic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood; the Shia, like the Sunnis, have their dogmatists and their pragmatists. The article focuses on Lebanon and how Hezbollah and its rival, the Shia cleric Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah, have recently improved their relationship as part of an effort to minimize the spread of ”Shia Salafism” (especially in the form of anti-Sunni sectarian agitation).

Online Radicalisation – New Article in RUSI Journal « ubiwar . conflict in n dimensions

The April 2009 issue of the RUSI Journal arrived today and contains an article by yours truly. The editors eventually called it, ‘Regulating the ‘Dark Web’: How a Two-Fold Approach can Tackle Peer-to-Peer Radicalisation’, and it’s essentially a critique of techno-centric approaches to ‘online radicalisation’, a quick look at UK political discourse on the subject, and some policy suggestions.

antropologi.info – anthropology in the news blog – Book review: How neoliberalism reshapes motherhood in Calcutta

How do middle-class women in Calcutta understand and experience economic change? What impact is globalization having on the new middle-classes in Asia? Our reviewer Tessa Valo has again been lucky with her choice of books. For antropologi.info, she reviewes Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-Class Identity in Contemporary India by Henrike Donner

altmuslimah.com – Author Dalia Mogahed: “We’re all working for a more well-informed citizenry”

Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, helped oversee the largest surveys of the Muslim world, co-authoring Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think in the process. Now, Barack Obama has tapped her to join his Faith Advisory Council. Here, we speak to Mogahed about her new position of influence.

Virtually Islamic: Research and News about Islam in the Digital Age

Gary R. Bunt – iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam

New book: The internet has profoundly shaped how Muslims perceive Islam, and how Islamic societies and networks are evolving and shifting within the twenty-first century. While these electronic interfaces appear new and innovative in terms of how the media is applied, much of their content has a basis in classical Islamic concepts, with an historical resonance that can be traced back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

iMuslims explores how these transformations and influences play out in diverse cyber Islamic environments, and how they are responding to shifts in technology and society. The book discusses how, in some contexts, the application of the internet has had an overarching transformational effect on how Muslims practice Islam, how forms of Islam are represented to the wider world, and how Muslim societies perceive themselves and their peers. On one level, this may be in terms of practical performance of Islamic duties and rituals, or on the interpretation and understanding of the Qur’an. On another level, cyber Islamic environments have exposed Muslims to radical and new influences outside of traditional spheres of knowledge and authority, causing long-standing paradigmatic shifts at a grassroots level within societies. iMuslims looks at how these changes are taking place, including through social networking sites and the blogosphere.

The book is backed up by an Online Bibliography (Version 1.0).

Gary Bunt’s website can be found HERE and his useful weblog HERE.
Dutch
Eerst militair, dan moslim – Binnenland – Reformatorisch Dagblad

Hun integratie blijft nog wat achter bij die in de rest van de maatschappij, maar moslims in de Nederlandse krijgsmacht zijn geen zeldzaamheid meer. Wat ervaart een moslimmilitair als hij op missie is in een islamitisch land als Afghanistan? Sergeant van de verbindingstroepen Buddy Masfirdaus: „Ik ben allereerst militair, pas daarna moslim.”

nrc.nl – Binnenland – Kinderen zorgen vaak voor Turkse en Marokkaanse ouderen

Kinderen zorgen vaak voor Turkse en Marokkaanse ouderen
De schoondochters wacht een zware klus

Door onze redacteur Sheila Kamerman
Gouda/Deventer, 7 mei. Het aantal Turks- en Marokkaans-Nederlandse ouderen groeit. Dochters en schoondochters nemen meestal de zorg op zich, vaak ten koste van zichzelf. Maar hoelang nog?

AD.nl – Gouda – ‘Gouda redt zichzelf wel’

Door RIK SNEIJDER
GOUDA – Gouda is opnieuw landelijk nieuws. Een reeks incidenten trekt de aandacht. Is Gouda nog te redden?

Deze en zeven andere vragen heeft AD Groene Hart voorgelegd aan mensen die het weten kunnen: voorzitter Edgar de Mol van Bewonersgroep Gouda Oost Veilig, Gouwenaar en directeur Farid Azarkan van Samenwerkingsverband van Marokkanen in Nederland, politicus Mohammed Mohandis van de PvdA in Gouda en zijn collegaraadslid voor de VVD Laura Werger.

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